


The Winter Is Warmer

by JustJasper



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Abusive Partner, Abusive Relationship, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Bruises, Depression, Domestic Violence, Homophobic Language, Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mental Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rape, Rape Aftermath, Rape Recovery, Recovery, Self-Destruction, Sexual Abuse, Sexual Dysfunction, Stalking, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Therapy, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-07-27
Updated: 2014-10-10
Packaged: 2017-10-21 19:52:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 9
Words: 37,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/229104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustJasper/pseuds/JustJasper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reid notices the bruises Morgan has, and soon he realises that someone is hurting the man he's in love with. What happens when Morgan confesses the most difficult secret of his life?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Bruises

**“In violence we forget who we are.” - Mary McCarthy**

The first time Derek came into the bullpen with a bruise under his eye, Emily asked if a woman had punched him, and even Hotch had smiled. He pretended to look hurt, putting his hand on his heart.

“I got this saving kittens from a burning building!” he said, and Rossi clapped him on the shoulder. Reid looked up from his desk, studying the mark on Morgan’s face. It was dark purple and sore-looking, around two inches long curving under and around the side of his eye.

“He got bested in Judo,” Garcia informed them, bustling through the bullpen towards her office.

“Hey!” Morgan called out after her. “Why you being a snitch, sexy momma?”

“Sorry, honey!” she called over her shoulder, not sounding sorry at all. Morgan looked around, caught Reid’s eye and ginned at him. Reid returned a smile, trying to drag his eyes away from the mark on his friend’s face. He did not need something else about Morgan that was distracting, did not need to feel that small ache in his chest making him want to reach out and sooth the bruise.

*

The second time Derek sported a bruise was almost two months later. It was bigger this time, and definitely considered a black eye. Reid watched him wince in discomfort as he stretched out his face on the plane back from a case.

“You’re six-foot-something,” Emily said, considering him. “How do you manage to get kicked in the face?”

“By sparring with someone who’s a damn lot better fighter than you are, even if they're a foot shorter,” Derek conceded. “I’m a black belt twice, he’s training for his fifth.”

“Wow.”

Reid wondered why it was now that Morgan was receiving injuries in Judo, when it had been a long running pastime of his.

“Well, women like injuries,” Morgan said confidently, “gives them something to take care of.”

“Ugh,” Emily pulled a face, and Morgan grinned guiltily. “Maybe the women you’re into.”

Reid quickly went back to concentrating on his coffee.

*

The third time, the bruises weren’t on his face.

Five weeks after the last occurrence, Spencer had noticed when Morgan came to work in a shirt and tie. It had been a long time since he had, even though it was casual, and he carried it with such confidence that everyone was commenting on his return to such suave wardrobe choices. It wasn’t until Morgan hadn’t rolled up his sleeves when he was interrogating a suspect that Reid started to feel weird about the clothing choice. He remembered making similar ones when he was injecting himself with drugs to hide the evidence.

He saw the bruises in the bathroom when Morgan was washing his hands. His sleeved had inched up to reveal deep red and purple bruising around the man’s wrists, and Derek had caught him looking. He’d quickly flicked his shirt down to cover them, and met Reid’s eyes defiantly, as if daring him to ask. Reid swallowed.

“Morgan...”

“Handcuffs,” Morgan said quickly.

“What?”

“A girl I went home with. I told her I used to be a cop, and she got carried away.”

“Oh.”

“She had her own cuffs, dude, she was intense.” He laughed.

“Right.” Reid nodded. Morgan tugged at his sleeves again as he passed Reid, heading to leave.

The explanation didn’t fit for Reid. Morgan was an alpha, a dominant personality, and he was strong; he couldn’t envision a situation in which he’d be convinced into submitting long enough to be restrained in handcuffs. He considered whether the marks could be from ropes, wondering if perhaps the man was engaging in consensual BDSM activity; but again, Morgan profiled as dominant. It made little sense for him to be sporting bruises from wrist restraints. Not everyone was as simple, of course, but it still didn't feel quite right.

Reid left the bathroom feeling a writhing in his stomach.

*

It was just a week later when Morgan showed up for work with a split lip, a bruised cheek and abrasions on several of his knuckles. Morgan flopped down at his desk opposite Reid’s, just returned from Hotch wanting to talk to him in his office.

“He asked me if I’m getting into fights,” Morgan sighed.

“Are you?”

“What? No.” He pulled a face. “I’m getting humiliated at Judo. I’m losing my touch, kid.”

“Maybe you should take a break from Judo,” he said, worrying the inside of his lip with his teeth.

“Eh.” Morgan waved his hand dismissively. “I’ll get back in stride soon.”

*

The next week, when Reid walked into the locker room to find Morgan pulling on a clean t-shirt, he saw the bruises on his torso. They weren’t slight discolouration; they were angry black and blue marks, and they were _huge_ , all over his back and ribs. He must have been staring, because Morgan looked startled when he realised Reid was in the room, and hurried out without saying anything to him.

Those bruises could not have been from Judo. Their placement made it clear that Morgan had been kicked and punched while he was on the floor, and that did not happen in Judo. Even if Morgan was fighting – Reid had considered him attending an underground fight club – hitting an opponent who was already grounded was considered cowardice.

As he parked up his old car in front of Morgan’s home, he hoped he was doing the right thing. Morgan answered the door, looking surprised at his visitor.

“Hey Reid. You okay?”

“Can I come in?” Reid asked, eyeing the boxer dog trying excitedly to get past Morgan’s leg.

“Sure.” He shrugged. “Back, Clooney,” he ordered, pushing the dog out of the way. It didn’t work for long, and soon Clooney was jumping up at Reid, attempting to lick his face. Reid knew the drill, and placated him with affection, enough to get him to stop fussing.

“”What’s up, Reid? You want a coffee?”

“Sure.”

He followed him through to the kitchen, Clooney pushing at his leg and trying to get more affection. He watched Morgan preparing coffee, raking his eyes up and down his form.

“Is someone hitting you?” he asked suddenly, unable to formulate a plan to drop the question into coffee-chatter.

“Excuse me?” Morgan frowned.

“You didn’t get those bruises from Judo.”

“It’s none of your business,” Morgan snapped.

“I know. But I’m worried about you, man. Your explanation and your injuries don’t match, and if-”

“You need to leave.” Morgan’s face was like a stone.

“Morgan, please, I’m just trying to understand.”

“You don’t need to understand. It’s none of your damn business. I want you to leave, Reid.”

“Okay, okay.”

Reid held up his hands in front of him in surrender. He backed up, heading for the door. Morgan followed, trying to shut it behind him. Reid wedged himself in the half-shut door, turning back to Morgan one last time.

“Morgan, you know I’m your friend, right? If you need to talk, about anything, you know I’ll be there.”

“Goodbye, Reid,” Morgan said pointedly, and Reid moved, biting back a protest as Morgan slammed the door behind him.

*

It nearly always started when Morgan was at his most vulnerable. They were watching basketball on the TV when the other man on the couch grabbed his neck and punched him in the gut. Derek coughed and reeled, winded and unable to fight back, leaving him pliable for the other to climb onto him, pinning his legs with strong knees, tightening his grip on his neck and raining more punches against his ribs and stomach.

“James!” he choked out, struggling under the other’s weight. One hand flew to the hand on his neck to try to loosen the hold that threatened to strangle him, while the other attempted to defend his middle from blows. “Stop, James!”

“Shut the fuck up, pussy!” James snarled, the usually caramel skin of his face turning a blotchy, angry red, his dark eyes wide with fury.

He didn’t even have to have a reason any more. The first time he’d hit Derek, he’d fought back, shocked by the sudden violence. It had ended with James’ foot between Derek’s shoulder blades, pressing him down into the floor and telling him to apologize for refusing to comply with his request to put out the trash. Morgan had, and had felt like a child for doing so. He knew he should have walked away from the relationship, the first _real_ relationship he’d ever had, but he hadn’t. He’d told himself it wouldn’t happen again, and reminded himself how lucky he was that James wanted him, that James had finally given him what he wanted.

He’d wanted to be able to stop pretending he was straight, he’d wanted to stop having to be the person in control. He’d wanted to move on from the person he knew he was never going to be able to give up control to. He hadn’t wanted to lead; couldn’t. He was terrified of what he was capable of if someone offered that kind of power to him. James had been dazzling; strong, alpha, charming, his equal. He’d wanted Derek, known instinctively he needed someone else to take the lead.

The violence hadn’t started until Derek realised the only time he was happy, truly fulfilled and sated was with James. Sex, affection, companionship, all of it was what he’d wanted for so long. Granted it wasn’t with the man he was never going to have, but James mattered because he was giving him everything he wanted, even if he wasn’t the same man. Derek was sure in time he’d be able to fall in love with James the same way he’d been in love with the one he couldn’t have for years.

Derek had rationalised that it wasn’t intimate partner violence, at least not the conventional sense. James wasn’t like a typical abuser; he didn’t cycle through abuse and remorse. He never apologized for striking out; instead he justified it. Derek couldn’t even remember when he’d started believing the other when he’d told him he needed to be hurt, that he deserved it because he was a coward faking his way through life as a playa, a pathetic faggot too scared to face the world’s judgement that he was still pretending to sleep with women when in reality he was submitting his body to a man, and enjoying it. Derek had realised it was true, that he was petrified of the judgement. Taking the violence had become considerable easier then, because he’d realised he deserved it; if he was too pathetic to be his true self, he deserved everything he got.

He’d tried to end their relationship once. James had shown him the collection of photographs he’d taken discreetly in some of their most intimate moments; they were photos of Morgan at his most vulnerable, wanton, submissive. He knew he couldn’t walk away, even in the moments when he doubted everything he’d been told by Buford that was echoed by James, that he wanted it and he deserved it and they were just giving him what he needed. If the people he threatened to show the photos to knew what Morgan was, what he’d done, it would ruin his life. He knew James owned him.

Shame kept him there. The same shame that had once kept him quiet.

“I’m sorry!” Derek gasped out, holding his hands out in submission. “I’m sorry!” He didn’t even know what he was apologizing for. It didn’t matter anymore. James stopped, throwing Morgan back roughly.

“It’s your fault,” James barked without looking at him, and Derek knew better than to counter him. “If you didn’t piss me off I wouldn’t have to put you in your fucking place, you pathetic shit.” He struck out with one last blown to Morgan’s abdomen. “Now,” he went on, dropping a hand to palm at the front of his jeans, “apologize properly.”

Morgan felt his lip tremble, but he fought back the emotion. He’d once done that willingly, even enjoyed it. Sex with a man that didn’t hurt like it had with his abuser as a teenager was part of how James had captured him, made him dependent. Now whether he got to enjoy it was entirely at the whim of his handsome, charming, cruel lover. He knew it would be worse if he refused; James would get so angry he’d go for the face, and then Morgan would have to explain to his team how he’d got hurt. The thought of them finding out what he was, what he was doing, what he was letting happen to him terrified him. He slipped off the couch and onto his knees between the other man’s legs.

*

“His name is James.”

Spencer opened his eyes in the darkness of the hotel room he was sharing with his team mate on a case.

“Who?” he said, trying not to sound sleepy as his brain tried to work out the significance of Morgan’s words.

“My boyfriend.”

“Oh.” Reid’s guts writhed with this information; Morgan was with a man. Morgan wasn’t straight. There was a little more than the zero percent chance Spencer had thought there was that his feelings might be reciprocated, and now the other was with a man who was hurting him.

Reid turned over, facing towards the other bed. Through the darkness he could see Morgan lying on his back, looking up at the ceiling. He’d changed after the lights went out to stop the other man from seeing his bruises again.

“He hurts you,” Reid stated quietly. He couldn’t fathom what kind of man James had to be to be able to keep hurting Morgan, for Morgan not to leave. He knew it was wrong, but it was so hard to believe Morgan could be anything but assertive in a relationship.

“It’s not like that,” Morgan said. Reid didn’t believe him.

“Then what is it like?”

“It’s fine,” Morgan said into the dark. “It’s alright.”

“Are you saying him injuring you is consensual?”

“Yeah,” Morgan said quickly. Reid instantly regretted asking, and giving Morgan an easy explanation instead of pushing him to explain it without prompting.

“Why are you telling me, Morgan?”

“I don’t know. I trust you. You can’t tell anyone.”

“Morgan-”

“You can’t, Reid, you’ve got no right. I can do my job, I’m fine, my personal life isn’t anyone else’s business.”

Reid wondered why his friend had told him at all if he wasn’t going to be allowed to do something – anything to stop it, but he didn’t say anything. He might not be the most socially talented man, but he knew this was delicate. Morgan trusted him with this admission, and as much as it reminded him of when he’d known there was something wrong with Elle so many years ago and hadn’t told anyone, he knew this was so much more complicated. Telling someone about Elle’s behaviour might have stopped her actions, but he wasn’t sure that telling someone about what he suspected was going on with Morgan would help.

“Are you happy?” Reid asked, not sure what else he could say. He wanted Morgan to tell him everything, wanted to know if it was as bad as the bruises looked. The other man didn’t answer for a long time.

“I’m going to sleep now.”

To Reid that was a resounding no. If there was any other answer, Morgan would have said. He didn’t completely understand Morgan’s apparent inability to lie to him; they were friends, of course, but Morgan kept his emotions closely guarded. This sharing was out of character, which made it even more worrying to the other man as he settled and tried to let himself sleep.

*

As Derek lay panting on James’ bed, naked and violated and trying to steady his breathing while he listened to the shower running, his mind whirred.

The first time Carl Buford had raped him, he had told him letting a man do that to his body was the ultimate expression of how much you cared about him. Derek had cared about Buford; he had given him so much, helped him, he was almost fatherly to him. It had been at his cabin; he’d made Morgan get on his hands and knees and put on a condom which was only slick enough to keep from chaffing the man who was violating him, offering no relief for Derek as he’d willed himself not to cry and failed, muffling the sound into his arm as he did what Buford had asked of him.

The first time he’d had sex with James, he’d been slightly tipsy but willing and consenting. James was sure and experienced, and while it hadn’t been comfortable it was nothing like his first experiences, overall he’d enjoyed it, and James had been attentive to Derek’s need afterward, bringing him off with his hand.

When Derek had worked up the courage to go to a gay club, James had been the first man to treat him in a way that didn’t make him incredibly uncomfortable. It was strange really; the conduct of previous men wasn’t any different to how he knew he had acted towards women: forward, flirty, clear that sex was the only question. He knew it was hypocritical for that behaviour in men towards him to make his skin crawl but it did. On the third time Derek had tried attending a gay bar, the time when he was considering giving up on the whole thing, he’d met James. He was attractive; mixed race, dark eyes and coffee-coloured skin, short cropped hair and clean shaven, tall and broad and even more muscular than Morgan. He’d been intense and charming, perceptive and able to read Morgan easily. They’d ended up going for a drink, and a week later going to see a football game together, and soon after the relationship had developed sexually behind closed doors. James wasn’t affectionate when it wasn’t part of the build up to sex, and he didn’t kiss as much as Derek found himself wanting, but he made him feel good. He was being sexual with a man, even being penetrated, and realising it didn’t have to feel dirty and it didn’t have to hurt so bad.

The violence had started after they’d been seeing each other for around three months, the first time Derek had spent the whole weekend at James’ apartment. He’d thought then about leaving, but the idea of letting go of what he’d wanted  since he could remember, being fulfilled in a way he never had with women, and going back to the intimidating scene of down-low and seeking scared him. So he’d pushed away every instinct he had that told him James was dangerous, and he was foolish to stay when was able to leave, because leaving meant solitude and Morgan wasn’t sure how long it would be before solitude meant death.

The first non-consensual sex he’d had with James had been after he’d missed a pre-planned date with him because of work. He’d made him feel guilty, manipulated him into undressing. He’d plied him with kisses that were prized like jewels to Derek, told he could make it all better if he had sex with him. Morgan had been lying on his stomach on James’ bed when he’d changed his mind, deciding he shouldn’t have to do it to make up for something he couldn’t help. James, with the situational upper hand hadn’t liked that development, and had twisted his arm behind his back painfully. When his lover raped him he regressed, buried his face in his free arm and didn’t resist, hoping it would be over as soon as possible.

That was almost what had just passed; a joyless coupling for Morgan, while James used his body, having decided his boyfriend didn’t deserve any attentiveness. He had a feeling that he would deny him the chance to shower, as he had done previously; he evidently enjoyed knowing Derek was uncomfortably reminded of what had just happened by way of burning pain and tacky lubricant coating his most private recesses. James was the only person in his life that Morgan did not profile; profiling him would make it impossible to justify why he stayed. James controlled him, and that was what he needed, because he knew he would be dangerous if he wasn’t controlled. And at the very base of it, he would rather be hurt than be alone.

**“Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence.” - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn**


	2. Sirens

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: this chapter contains graphic narration of a rape.

**“The walls we build around us to keep sadness out also keeps out the joy.” - _Jim Rohn_**

Three weeks after Morgan had told him he was involved with a man, Reid hadn’t been able to ignore the situation any longer and had spent almost the entirety of his weekend reading. That wasn’t unusual, but the subject focus was; everything he read was about intimate partner violence. Every book, every paper, and every article he could get his hands on he absorbed, trying to focus on things that specifically dealt with male victims and male abusers, but there was a frustrating lack of such as compared to information on male abusers and female victims. He knew it was because women were more often victims of domestic abuse, but that didn’t make him feel any less disheartened.

He focused in on the personal accounts and publications targeted at people at risk of male-on-male domestic violence, because he was still having trouble reconciling the Morgan who was still barging onto scenes, kicking down doors and tackling armed suspects with a Morgan who was staying with someone who was hurting him. It wasn’t as if he didn’t understand the psychological process of someone who stayed with an abuser, it was profiling and he’d been doing that for years. But most of the models he had to work with were a structure of male and female, there was a lack of discussion and experience of a male-male dynamic. He couldn’t apply what he knew to Morgan, so it didn’t fit.

Recalling all the things he’d read over the weekend about reasons for abuse victims to stay in relationships, he went through them. The most common was ‘financial dependence’, which couldn’t be Morgan because Reid knew he had disposable income from buying and renovating properties. “Inexperience” was a commonly listed reason, and Spencer couldn’t imagine Morgan being inexperienced. Then again, he’d had no idea Morgan liked men.  He knew about Morgan’s past, and wondered if exploring his non-heterosexuality was a relatively new development. ‘Fear’ was another commonly cited reason; fear of retaliation, fear of being outed. It could be that, Reid figured; Morgan had never implied any interest in men, had even had his rare moments when he seemed uncomfortable when it was implied he might not be straight.

Reid shut down the laptop and closed the book he was simultaneously reading, deciding it was time for bed. He did not expect a knock at the door, didn’t expect to see Morgan through the peep hole, and certainly didn’t expect Morgan to have Clooney in tow.

“Hi,” Morgan said. His lip was split and bleeding.

“Hey,” Reid said stupidly, blinking himself out of his shock and ushering his friend inside. Clooney pulled on the short length of available leash and sniffed at everything he could reach, including Reid’s legs.

Morgan was smiling in a relaxed way but it didn’t quite reach his eyes, as if he was teetering on the edge of pretending things were okay.

“Morgan,” Reid said carefully, “what happened?” They were close, but Morgan was guarded. Anything that brought him to Reid’s apartment at gone midnight with his dog was not going to be good.

“I left him.” He shrugged helplessly.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Okay.” Reid nodded.

He gestured at the couch, and Morgan got the idea, sitting down and placating Clooney with fuss so he would settle beside his leg. Reid, who had gone to fetch a damp cloth, returned and joined Morgan on the sofa. He hesitant reached out towards his friend’s injured face, but before contact could be made Morgan plucked the cloth from Reid’s hand and pressed it to his face himself, gently wiping away the blood that had seeped out of the wound and started to dry down his chin.

“What happened, Morgan?” he asked, worrying his fingers against each other.

“He asked me to move in with him,” Morgan said, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning back into the sofa.

“So you left?”

“I should have said yes.”

“What?” Reid frowned, before he could temper his reaction.

“He’s good for me.”

“ _Really_? Morgan, this isn’t good for you.”

“No offence Reid, but you have no idea what I am,” Morgan said quietly. “He controls what I am, and that’s what I need.”

“What you are?” Reid pressed. “What? Gay? That’s not a disorder, not something that needs controlling.”

“You don’t get it,” Morgan huffed.

“Then explain it.”

“You wouldn’t understand,” Morgan murmured. “You’re a good man.”

“And you’re not?”

“Not in that way.”

“What way?” Reid was trying not to sound impatient, even though he sure felt like that.

“He controls what I am," Morgan said. “He controls what I can’t.”

“I don’t understand,” Reid shook his head. “Why do you need to be controlled, Morgan?”

“I’m not right, Reid.” He shook his head. Spencer couldn’t fathom what Morgan meant, what defect Morgan could possibly be talking about. He changed tactics accordingly.

“Whatever you think isn’t right with you, you don’t deserve what he’s done. You do not deserve to be hurt. You don’t deserve this.” He nodded pointedly at Morgan’s face.

“I-”

“Nothing you could do or say would result in you deserving physical or psychological _abuse_. Nothing you could think or feel, either, Morgan.”

“It’s not abuse-” Morgan tried to laugh, but it was a desperate sound, one that died as soon as it left his mouth.

“Abuse is any behaviour that intentionally causes harm to another person,” Reid said. “He’s harming you, Morgan, hurting you, and I-” he caught himself before he could continue, pressing his lips together.

“You what?” Morgan considered him miserably.

“Nothing, this is about you.”

“What were you going to say?” Morgan pressed.

“It’s not important-”

“Reid,” he said, and there was a desperate tone to his voice the other man had never heard.

“I don’t want him to hurt you. I don’t want anyone to hurt you.”

“Why?” Morgan sounded genuinely perturbed, and that made Reid’s chest ache.

“Because I care about you, man. And you don’t deserve it. And I’m scared for you. I’m scared I can’t do anything.”

Clooney whined, shifting his head on Morgan’s knee. Morgan smiled sadly down at him.

“The first time it got rough at my place,” he said almost off-hand, and Reid felt a jolt of something sickly in his gut, “Clooney tried to defend me. Put himself right between us. James kicked him, and I...” Suddenly it seemed like Morgan’s voice might break, and Reid wanted to grab his shoulders and shout that it was absurd that the upset was saved for his dog rather than for him. Morgan took a long, shuddering breath in and manager to keep his cool. “I just started locking Clooney out when James came over.”

“You can’t go back to him,” Reid said. “You don’t need to be hurt. And he might hurt Clooney.”

Morgan looked at him in shock, and Reid couldn’t believe how vulnerable he looked. It was difficult not to shout in frustration that the man seemed to react with more worry to the idea of his dog being hurt than him.

“I think I have to,” Morgan shook his head.

“No you don’t,” Reid pressed. “Do you want to?”

Morgan shook his head, closing his eyes and the muscles in his face stiffening as he clearly fought back his emotions.

“Then don’t, man.”

“He...” Morgan’s gaze fell away from Reid’s, down to where his arms were crossed on his chest. “He’s got photos...”

“Private photos?” Reid guessed.

“Yeah. When I tried to leave before...”

“Your team isn’t going to judge you because of photos.”

Morgan gave a single silent laugh that shook his shoulders.

“You wouldn’t even talk to me if you saw them.”

“I’m your friend, Morgan,” Reid said earnestly, “no photos can change that.” The desire he had to tell Morgan he loved him was strong and entirely inappropriate. It would only make thing worse, and it was selfish. It wasn’t about him. “Please, man,” he said gently, “you can stay here tonight. Don’t do anything now, don’t go back. Just... please just stay here. You can have the bed if you want, I don’t mind the couch and-”

“The couch will be fine for me,” Morgan mumbled.

*

A week after ending it, a week of not seeing James, a week of screening his calls, and Morgan couldn’t believe how _good_ it felt. He felt free, like a prisoner pardoned from their sentence. A fog had lifted in his mind, and he knew that Reid had been right; he didn’t deserve abuse. He wasn’t sure where his life was going, what he required to be happy, but it wasn’t James, and for now it just felt good to be free of him. He was still covered in bruises beneath his clothes that made every movement uncomfortable, but he knew they would be the last ones. The discomfort was almost cleansing, like exorcising demons. Reid was a constant presence at work now, keeping an eye on him, asking him how he was more often than was necessary. Morgan didn’t mind answering, because for the first time in a long time he could truthfully answer yes.

It was over lunch at their desks in a largely empty bullpen that Morgan scooted his chair around to Reid’s while he took a bite of chicken sub, and pushed the chair up alongside him. Reid smiled over his own ham on rye lunch, and Morgan didn’t miss the genius’ eyes raking over him, looking for injuries.

“Do you date, Reid?” he asked. “I mean, I know you like guys and girls.” He shrugged a little with the question, indicating a lack of hostility or pressure to answer. Reid’s bisexuality wasn’t a secret, but because he could be so painfully socially inept sometimes it felt like a moot point; he was just as awkward with men as with women.

“Are you asking?” Reid said with a small laugh.

“Oh, no,” Morgan said quickly. He regretted it when Reid blinked a few times and pulled a face, and knew his quick reaction must have seemed rather insulting. But even with his changing perspective of the last week, one thought had not changed, had only strengthened as long as he’d known Reid, the years he’d harboured feelings for him that were not platonic; Reid deserved so much better than he was, that he could ever be. “I was just asking.”

“I’ve gone on dates,” Reid said. “Things just don’t seem to progress in the way considered conventional.”

“Meaning...?”

“I don’t go on many second dates.” He smiled sheepishly. “I talk too much, I think. And it’s not like I go to many places where I meet people.”

“Right. I don’t know where I’m meant to go to meet people. Bars are just... and everywhere else I like to hang out, it’s not exactly places where you can tell for sure if someone’s gay.”

“You want to date people?” Reid asked.

“I dunno,” Morgan shrugged. “Just want to meet more gay people I guess. I’m tired of being alone.”

“You’re not alone,” Reid said earnestly. Morgan smiled warmly, despite the disappointment of knowing he could never ask Reid to be the one to relieve his loneliness.

“Thanks, kid.”

*

“Morgan?” Reid said into his phone, woken from sleep. He ran a hand over his face, flicking on his bedside lamp and picking up his watch to check the time; 1:14AM. There was heavy breathing on the other end of the line, and when the other man spoke it was a hurried whisper.

“Reid? Are you at your place?”

“Yeah, man...” he said groggily, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed.

“Can I come over?”

“Sure-”

There was a loud bang on the line, and Morgan swore under his breath. Reid blinked quickly, realising he needed to be awake immediately.

“Morgan, where are you?”

“I’m at my-shit!”

There was another loud bang and what Reid was sure was the sound of splintering wood. Morgan’s breathing was shallow and fast, and he was swearing repeatedly.

“Morgan, what’s happening?” he asked, even as he hurried out of his bedroom in his pyjamas to find his shoes.

There was no answer, just a voice that wasn’t Morgan’s at a distance.

_“YOU FUCKING WHORE!”_

“James, just-” Morgan’s voice was closer, but as if he was holding the phone away from his face. Morgan’s strong voice had never sounded so terrified.

As Reid clasped the phone to his ear with his shoulder, pulled on his coat and attempted to lock his apartment door, he heard a loud clatter on the line followed by a grunt of Morgan in pain. As he hurried down the stairwell the pained sounds from Morgan continued.

“James!” he gasped. “Stop! C’mon!”

The answer seemed to be more blows, because Morgan cried out in pain and the other voice shouted obscenities.

_“You’re a fuckin’ whore! You're some faggot who thinks he’s too fucking good! You’re a fucking bitch!”_

“James, don’t!” Morgan shouted as Reid managed to put his phone on speaker and throw it onto the passenger seat of his old car with his gun, listening to increased struggling blast out into the space as he drove off.

There was a cry of pain that wasn’t Morgan’s, and grunting and movement from two people, and then a choking noise that almost made Reid swerve into the wrong lane.

 _“Fucking fag!”_   There was a series of bangs each immediately followed by a cry of pain from Morgan.

“James!” Morgan gasped, coughing for breath. “Don’t!”

As Reid listened to the scrambling sounds he swore at the red light, but knew if he got pulled over he’d be too late. He should call the police, but he couldn’t cut off the call; he had to hear, and to know what was happening, had to know it wasn’t too late.

“No! No! Don’t!” Morgan screeched, terror ripping through his usually deep voice.

_“Shut your mouth! You fucking like it, whore!”_

Reid’s heart skipped too fast, and he caught a gasp of his own fear from coming up, pressing on the accelerator pedal. That couldn’t happen, couldn’t happen to Morgan.

Morgan gave a fractured scream that quickly dissolved into sobs, sounding so close to the phone. Reid could hear rhythmic breathing and grunting, the thump of one body into another, Morgan’s gasps of agony. He knew what was happening and he wished there was any way he could be wrong.

It stretched on forever, and Reid didn’t realise until his vision blurred that he was he was crying. He blinked the tears away from his eyelids, forcing them out.

The sounds of struggle and a protesting noise of pain from Morgan’s attacker, and Reid distinctly heard the sound of Morgan’s Glock 17 being cocked. He waited to hear the shot ring out, but it didn’t; instead there was more sounds of struggle and the heavy thud of the gun hitting the floor.

_“You fucking bitch! You're such a fucking fag!”_

Morgan cried out in pain, and Reid was sick to recognise the sound of the next blows; they were the sound of the barrel of a firearm against bone and flesh. Reid counted eleven blows before they stopped, and Morgan’s laboured, pained breathing was cut with a whimper. The other voice was closer than before, nearer to wherever the phone had fallen.

_“Beg. Beg me not to.”_

“No,” Morgan breathed, then a gasped sob of pain.

_“Fine, whore.”_

“James, no! Please don’t! Please please James! Please!”

Whatever was happening, Morgan would rather beg that face it, and that made Reid’s head swim.

_“Too late, bitch.”_

The shriek of pain forced from Morgan’s throat filled Spencer’s car and filled his mind, and he slammed his hands on the steering wheel. He was less than three miles from Morgan’s home.

The sobs Morgan was sounding out were the single most nauseating, terrifying noises Reid had ever heard in his _life_. The words from his attacker and all they could mean were close behind.

_“Should have opened your ass up like that the first time.”_

There was the heavy rattle of the gun being dropped, and any relief that gave Reid was immediately stolen when Morgan gasped and the sound of motion started again.

Reid was only a mile away when he hit a red light, and even though every bone in his body told him to ignore it he couldn’t risk anything that would stop him getting to Morgan. As the light turned green on the line there was a long grunt and a heaving, broken sob from Morgan, and Reid’s resolve broke; he snatched up the phone and ended the call, frantically pushing in 911 and holding the phone to his ear as he steered with one hand. He practically screamed at the operator for police and an ambulance at Morgan’s address, and as he pulled up outside of Morgan’s house he didn’t even switch off the ignition as he dialled for Hotch and took his gun from the passenger seat, almost falling out of his car in his hurry.

“Hotch!” he shouted as he paced up the path towards the porch, gun raised and scanning the dark for any signs of life. “It’s Morgan he’s hurt I’m at his house you need to get here NOW.” he said in one breath, and didn’t even wait for an answer before he ended the call and shoved the phone into his coat pocket.

Morgan’s front door was open, splintered where it had been kicked, and the doorframe damaged. Reid scanned the hall, resisted shouting for Morgan in case James was still present, and listened. There was no sound, no struggle, so steeling himself Reid turned the corner into the lounge, and his knees promptly buckled, almost giving out beneath him. With no sign of the attacker Reid rushed to Morgan’s side, where he lay face down on the hard wood in front of the couch. There was blood; pooling and splattered, smudged fingerprints and smears. So much blood on the wooden floor, too much for it to be okay. The seat of Morgan’s jeans was ripped wide open, revealing his bruised backside and the blood and semen seeping from between his cheeks. Reid dropped heavily to his knees, not  even registering that it hurt.

He didn’t want to move him in case he had spinal injury, but as he carefully manoeuvred his face, Morgan, half-conscious, pushed up with an arm. Reid grabbed at him, supporting him as he rolled, cradling his face and unable to stop a strangled cry escaping him. Morgan was barely recognisable below the blood and swelling; an eye completely swollen shut, blood pouring from a clearly broken nose, leaking from a split lip and his white teeth completely red, and several large lacerations above his eye and on his head that coated Reid’s hand quickly. Distinct in the coating of blood were trails of clear skin where Morgan had been crying.

“Morgan, help’s coming.” His voice broke, and Morgan peeped open his less effected eye. His breathing was shallow and laboured, wheezing in and out of his chest.

Reid cast his eyes over the rest of Morgan’s large form, looking for more injury. He spied his Glock on the floor nearby, and before he could even considered whether it was a bad idea he picked it up. There were no casings around and no apparent bullet wounds on Morgan, but the barrel of the gun was streaked in blood. That could have come from the evident pistol-whipping that had happened, but Reid could also see blood inside the barrel. He almost wretched as he put that together with what he had heard on the phone together in his mind.

He stared when Morgan’s hand wrapped around his own on the handle of the gun, slowly pulling it towards him. Reid blinked in shock as Morgan angled the muzzle under his chin, and instinctively Spencer curled his fingers around the trigger so Morgan couldn’t link his finger through.

“Kill me,” Morgan breathed. Reid opened his mouth, but no noise came out. “Kill me,” Morgan repeated, twitching with a sob.

Reid pried his hand out of Morgan’s and tossed the gun several feet away.

“Morgan!” he hushed, watching a tear from his own face drop onto Morgan’s neck, disturbing the blood there.

Sirens. Finally, Reid heard sirens.

 **“The human heart dares not stay away too long from that which hurt it most. There is a return journey to anguish that few of us are released from making.** **” - Lillian Smith**


	3. Gun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: this chapter deals explicitly with suicidal ideation.

**“Each time a breeze starts, I feel the air all the way through me.” - Nina LaCour**

Morgan was conscious, but it didn’t feel real as he undressed over the large sheet of paper. He couldn’t remember how he’d got there, wasn’t even sure what he was doing. He simply focused on the calm female voice that told him to remove each bit of clothing. Her tone was soothing as she combed through the hair on his head and his pubic hair, but he couldn’t understand the words. There was pain as she plucked hair from him, but it was almost as if the pain happened through a hazy layer.

The flash of the camera was harsh against his eyes as photos of every part of him were recorded. There were people in the world who believed being photographed took part of their soul, and for the first time in his life he understood it; each flash of the camera felt like it was ripping away his flesh, his sinew, bone, through everything to get to his soul. It wouldn’t find it. He didn’t even believe in it as more than an expression of consciousness, but he still felt like his soul had already been taken from him.

He stared off into the middle distance and complied when he was asked to open his mouth for a swab, merely blinked slowly as he was encouraged to brace his hands on the room’s examination bed and bend over so he could be swabbed anally. That hurt, and he gave a grunt of pain. The nurse apologized. She asked him to sit on the bed and it hurt but he did, offering no resistance as she took blood samples from his arm. He watched the vials fill up with a detached wonder why she couldn’t simply collect the blood that was drying on his face. She held his hand aloft and scraped under his fingernails into an evidence envelope, and then cut his nails into another one.

When she handed him a set of tracksuit trousers and a t-shirt, he recognised them; they were familiar in his hands, and he was sure they were his. He blinked several times slowly, and wondered where his gun was.

*

“Where is he?” Hotch said, striding towards Reid. The thin man’s hands were covered in blood, and so were the front of his stripy pyjamas under his coat.

“He’s being examined,” Reid said weakly, looking down at his red hands, glad for the absence of the rest of the team at that moment. “He needs emergency medical attention; he has seriously lacerations on his head. And they’re... they’re doing a rape kit.”

Hotch visibly paled.

“He-” he paused, taking in a breath through his nose to steady himself. “He consented to that?” It seemed Hotch thought similarly to Reid, suspecting that Morgan would resist consenting to be examined. He hadn’t, and that scared Reid.

“Yeah,” Reid nodded. “He’s in shock, I’m not sure the consent was entirely independent. But they took him in anyway.”

“What happened, Reid?” Hotch asked. Reid knew he could no longer be Morgan’s secret keeper without it being the end of his friend. He should have told someone when he suspected, before this.

“Morgan’s ex-boyfriend attacked him in his home.” He couldn’t meet Hotch’s eye as he betrayed Derek’s confidence.

“His ex-boyfriend?” Hotch echoed plainly, processing the information. His voice was stiff when he spoke again. “You’ve known about this for a while.”

“I started to wonder five months ago,” Reid admitted. “When he started showing up with bruises. He told me he had a boyfriend about a month ago. I promised I wouldn’t tell the rest of the team. I’m sorry, Hotch. I didn’t know what to do. His ex-boyfriend had leverage, blackmailing him to stay. Morgan left him a week ago. I should have told you, one of the most statistically dangerous times for victims of intimate partner violence is when they attempt to leave.”

“What happened tonight?” Hotch said seriously.

“He called me,” Reid said, moving to rub his face and then realising he was still covered in Morgan’s blood and a small sound of disgust bubbled out of his throat. “He wanted to come over, then I heard James kicking the door in. The phone stayed on and I got up to drive over there. I heard him beating Morgan, he dropped the phone I think but it was close by. He started to rape him-” Reid had to force back a pained sound, shaking his head and willing himself to continue. He had the capacity to recite what had happened as if it were playing in front of his eyes, but he did not want to. He had to make it brief, could not share the description of each cry, each noise, each plea from Morgan. That was too much of a betrayal. “I was driving as fast as I could. I heard Morgan’s gun being cocked, and it sounded like Morgan had been able to stop the assault. Then there was more struggling, and I heard James pistol whip him repeatedly. I think... I think...” he swallowed painfully. “I think he sodomised Morgan with his own gun. It was loaded. Then he raped him again. I called the police, then I called you. I should have called the emergency services sooner, they could have arrived before the sexual assault, but I couldn’t cut off the call-”

“Reid,” Hotch shook his head. He was unnaturally still, his face creased with worry. “Reid,” he repeated, visibly collecting himself. “Look after him. I’m going to make sure that kit gets to where it needs to be. I’ll come and see him later. I’ll call the team in the morning so we can proceed.”

Reid nodded numbly. He didn’t know what Hotch meant by ‘proceeding’, but he didn’t care. Morgan had been under examination for a long time, longer than the average time it took to run a rape kit. He was glad Hotch was making himself scarce, as they both knew Morgan would not want more people to witness the extent of his state than was necessary.

*

Morgan knew he was in a hospital because it smelt of antiseptic, it was a little too cold and he recognised the beep of machinery. He only managed to pry one eye open, revealing the stark shades of grey and white. Every part of him seemed to hurt and a groan escaped him.

“Morgan?” it was Reid’s voice he tried to turn his face towards. He blinked Reid into focus, his face taught and worried, but no longer covered in blood. “Keep still, you sustained multiple injuries.”

“What injuries?” he huffed, willing himself not to show the pain.

“Just rest Morgan, you-”

“What injuries?” he demanded, and Reid crossed his arms over his chest.

“Substantial level three facial bruising, with a severe periorbital hematoma,” he said, gaze flittering around as the man was apt to do when he recited information. “A broken nose, lacerations to your lip, cheek and head, of which the three major lacerations on your head have had fourteen stitches collectively. You have bruises from attempted strangulation, your eighth and ninth left ribs are fractured, and you have extensive bruises all over your body, flesh or otherwise. You have moderate rectal trauma which won’t require surgery. They still have to test you for brain injury and optical damage.”

No wonder he felt like he was being pulled apart and branded repeatedly. He lifted a hand experimentally, giving up when his shoulder began to protest with blunt, throbbing pain.

“I’m sorry,” Reid said.

“Why are you sorry?” He grimaced, attempting to shift to a more comfortable position, even though he doubted there was one.

“If I’d have hung up sooner and called the police, you might not have been-”

“Hung up?” Morgan said, feeling the rising panic at the back of his throat. “You-you heard?”

“Yes,” Reid nodded. “I’m sorry, Morgan.”

“Don’t say you’re sorry!” He snapped. “It’s not your fault, and it doesn’t help worth a damn. This is my fault.”

“No it’s not, Morgan,” Reid said, eyes going wide. “Victims are never to blame for their assaults, no matter-”

“I’m not a victim," Morgan said. A less patient man would have laughed at his denial, but Reid didn’t.

“When Hotch gets back-”

“Hotch?” Morgan felt his voice crack. “You told him?”

“Yes.”

“Reid!” he barked, which made his chest spasm and he groaned. “I trusted you, and you-”

“I didn’t have a choice, man.” Reid’s voice was increasing in pitch slightly in his distress, but Morgan didn’t care at that moment.

“I trusted you with this!”

“What was I meant to do, Morgan?” Spencer pressed. “Were you going to turn up for work saying you got injured in judo again? Or pretend you got mugged? And what when the team asks about the clear overkill of your injuries, or the strangulation marks, what were you going to say?”

“Get the fuck out, Reid!” he yelled. Reid didn’t move. “GET OUT!”

“No.”

Morgan growled, pushing himself up and ignoring how much it hurt. He wasn’t even sure what he was going to do; storm out, throw Reid out, punch him. It didn’t matter, because as he reeled in pain and tried to steady himself he felt a hand braced flat on his chest. He stopped, opened his eye and looked down. Reid’s hand was laid flat against him, firm over the material of his t-shirt. He was so surprised at the touch he let Reid press him back down to the hospital bed. When Morgan looked up his friend’s face was a forced neutral, his lips pressed too tightly together as he tried to keep his face clear, but he didn’t remove the hand. Reid didn’t object to being touched by people he trusted, but he never implemented casual contact.

“They need to keep you in for observation,” Reid said softly. Morgan felt his jaw lock in an attempt to keep his emotions from playing out on his face; he didn’t know how one touch could make him feel so much. It was more than a touch; it was soothing, it was a command to be still. It felt good to comply to Reid’s unspoken request, in a similar way to how good it had felt to give up control to James in the beginning. “You need to rest,” Reid said, removing his hand finally. Morgan wanted to ask him to put it back, but he didn’t. He carefully settled back, although nothing was comfortable for his battered body, and Reid took the chair by the bed.

*

Some hours later – four, Reid told him – Hotch was waiting in Morgan’s hospital room when he was wheeled back from his MRI scan. The nurse made to help Morgan get back onto the bed, but he waved her away dismissively.

“Reid,” Hotch nodded at him, “Morgan.” He turned his attention to the man in the wheelchair, face blank as he absorbed the sight of him swollen and stitched, cut and bruised. “You’re on medical leave until further notice” he said.

“What?” Morgan frowned, then hissed at the pain that caused him. “Hotch, I-”

“You need time to heal, your injuries are extensive.”

“You can’t-”

“I can, and I am.”

Morgan defiantly kept meeting Hotch’s eyes in the tense silence.

“You should have told us about your relationship.”

“It was nobody’s business.”

“It became our business when it put you at risk.”

“That’s bullshit," Morgan snapped. “My private life is none of your damn business, period.”

“You could have died tonight,” Hotch said evenly.

“No I-”

“Actually,” Reid said, and Morgan was surprised to look around and find him watching him with his arms tucked tightly around his chest, “studies have repeatedly shown that people in abusive relationships are most at risk of being murdered when they end the abusive relationship. Four percent of male homicide victims each year are killed by an intimate partner.”

“Law enforcement has said they’ll share information on the investigation. I’m going to call the team later-”

“What?” Morgan breathed, chest aching. “What investigation? I’m not pressing charges, and you can’t tell the team. Don’t you dare, Hotch.”

“What do you mean you’re not pressing charges?” Hotch frowned. A quick glance at Reid showed him looking shocked.

“Exactly that,” Morgan said plainly.

“Morgan, he assaulted you,” Hotch said. “He raped you.”

“I never would’ve guessed,” Morgan bit, gesturing at his battered face.

“You need to-”

“I am not repeating over and over what happened to me,” Morgan said firmly. “I will _not_ do that. I only need to live it once, thanks.”

“How many times have you had to encourage a victim to press charges, as a cop, or in the BAU?” Hotch asked. “Isn’t it always worth it?”

Morgan actually laughed.

“You used to be a lawyer, Hotch. How in the hell could you say that? Reid,” he didn’t look around at him, kept looking up at Hotch, “how many _reported_ male-on-male sexual assaults go to trial?”

“Twenty-one percent,” Reid said.

“How many of those trials result in a conviction?”

“Less than four percent.” The words came out before he realised how awful the statistic was.

“So for a four percent chance, I’d have to go to court,” Morgan said slowly, voice thick with anger, “testify, explain in graphic detail what he did, and listen to him most likely attempt to defend himself with character assassination and claims of consent. And you know what, some of the things I’ve consented to with him would not win sympathy with the jury.”

“What you previously consented to does not negate the fact that you were raped,” Hotch said stiffly.

“It does to a jury,” Morgan spat. “You know that, and I know that. I’m not gonna do it. I will not.”

Hotch looked like he wanted to argue, but he didn’t.  Morgan didn’t imagine it would be the end of the discussion, but that hardly mattered.

“Will you two leave?” he snapped. Hotch and Reid exchanged glances.

“I’m going to stay with you, Morgan,” Reid said.

“No, you’re not.” Morgan couldn’t bring himself to look at him.

“I am,” Reid said. Morgan wanted to shout, but he knew it would hurt if he did.

“I’m not staying here. I’m going home. I don’t need to be here. They’ve done my tests.”

“Yes, and you have a concussion,” Hotch pointed out.

“Mild,” Morgan said sharply.

Hotch kept the gaze until his superior ended it. He nodded his head at Reid and left, and Reid followed, obviously to have a conversation Hotch didn’t want to have in front of Morgan. Morgan didn’t care to wonder what it was about; every part of his brain was concentrating on handling the pain creasing through his body.

*

Reid didn’t try to fuss when Morgan wouldn’t let him help him from Reid’s car to his miraculously fixed front door. He didn’t comment on the fact that although the living room had been cleaned, he could still see blood splatter against the bottom of one of the leather couches. He didn’t make a big deal of it when Morgan sat on the other one, or when he couldn’t finish his portion of the casserole his neighbour had brought around, having spotted Morgan being brought back to the house. He even tried not to show his worry when Morgan ignored Clooney, refusing to lower his hand to stroke him and simply listened to him whine while he starred through the TV for almost fifteen minutes, until eventually the dog slunk off to his bed, looking thoroughly miserable.

“You can go home now, Reid,” Morgan said suddenly, at gone eleven.

“I-” he faltered, looking at Morgan from his end of the couch, “I think I should stay. I’ll sleep on the sofa. You have a concussion, you shouldn’t be alone.”

“I don’t want you to stay.”

“Morgan, I think-”

“I don’t give a damn what you think,” he quipped, and Spencer fought a sigh. There was no way he was comfortable leaving Morgan alone. It had been just shy of twenty four hours since he was attacked, and he was a mess; he could barely move, his bruises were even worse now with the elapsed time, and he wasn’t connecting. He was distant and vacant and Reid was scared.

“I’m staying,” Reid said, voice calm and even.

“Fine,” Morgan huffed, pushing himself gingerly up off the sofa. Reid made to help him, but Morgan pointed his finger at him accusingly. “Don’t. I’m fine. I can get in my own damn bed.”

Reid knew it was pride to Morgan, that the man was attempting to salvage his strength. He did what a friend who understood Morgan should do; he sat and pretended not to hear it take Morgan ten minutes to climb the stairs, pretended not to hear his pained grunts and gasps and towards the end, a sob.

*

He couldn’t sleep. It was three minutes past four in the morning when Derek bothered to look at the red numbers on his bedside alarm. He had been lying in the dark because it hurt just a little less than sitting, and his body screamed in protest when he moved, slowly swinging his legs off the bed, reaching out to flick on his lamp. This bedroom was bathed suddenly in a dim orange light, throwing shadows across the walls.

Morgan had realised as soon as he’d seen his door had been fixed that his gun would be in evidence, because his home had been a crime scene. His backup, a Glock 27, was in his bedside draw with his badge, a full clip of nine rounds unloaded as per protocol.

His hands weren’t shaking but his grip was weak, and he dropped the heavy clip on the floor and had to reach down while his ribs protested to retrieve it. As he pushed the clip into the gun he rolled his shoulders painfully, as if that would somehow prepare him for what he was going to do.

He had known he would do it since the moment James had ejaculated inside of him with the most self-satisfied sound, lamenting that Morgan had outright refused to have sex without a condom previously.

 _“It’s cute that you were saving yourself,”_ James had teased, _“wasn’t that special?”_

He had kissed him between the shoulder blades and left, only after he’d used his foot in his sneaker and half-turned Morgan over to peer under him looking for a wet spot, while asking if he’d cum because he enjoyed it. Perhaps it was by god’s grace that Morgan’s body hadn’t even reacted automatically, although he wasn’t sure anything could have made him more shameful.

It was over. Morgan clicked the clip into place with the heel of his hand. He was broken, and it was his own fault. He was one final step away from obliterating himself entirely, and then it wouldn’t hurt any more. He took a slow breath in through his nose as he took proper hold of the firearm, linking his finger through and resting it against the smooth metal of the trigger. He had never thought suicide as simple as cowardice, but he still felt like a coward. Continuing to live just wasn’t enough incentive for him not to be perceived as such; he hoped his team would understand.

He cocked the gun.

Reid would be woken by the shot. Guilt, then, knowing what he was going to put his friend, who was also the man he was in love with, through. Guilt wasn’t enough to stop him though, because every second he was still conscious, still had neurons firing, it hurt unimaginably. Not just his physical body, but his brain, his mind, in his bones. He pressed the barrel of the gun under his chin, moved in back half an inch.

His mind bastardised his favourite author, bringing a skewed and wrong quote swimming into the forefront of his mind; _nothing is beautiful and everything hurts_.

He almost laughed at the cliché of having a last thought be so poetic, but nowhere near original. It wasn’t him. He closed his eye. The other was still swollen shut. That shell wasn’t him. A bullet wouldn’t destroy him, just his brain tissue, because he was already gone. A bullet simply cleaned up the mess of the twisted echo of a person he had left behind. He lifted his other hand to wrap around the trigger hand. His hands didn’t shake.

“Morgan.”

He gripped the pistol tighter, felt his face crease in misery to match the sound of Reid’s voice.

“Morgan, don’t do this.”

He opened his eye, found his vision blurred with tears. Reid’s collar was sticking up only a little less awkwardly than his hair as he stood in the doorway, eyes wide and hands raised, as came naturally to calm someone.

“Morgan, you don’t have to do this.”

He couldn’t blow his brains out in front of his friend. He couldn’t. But it didn’t solve anything, because he still wanted to do it. Reid couldn’t stand in that doorway forever. He wouldn’t have to live with the guilt of the pain he’d cause to the other man, because he would be gone. It would be over. He needed it to be over. He adjusted his hold on the gun a little, pressing it harder under his chin.

“Derek, please don’t do this.”

Morgan wasn’t sure if it was the ‘please’, or his name, or the way Reid couldn’t stop the terror from seeping through the cracks of his forced calm, but he blinked and forced tears out of his undamaged eye, a tiny hitched breath catching in his throat.

“Derek.”

Reid took several slow steps towards him across the bedroom. Morgan had begun to shake.

“Give me the gun, Derek.”

If he did it now, Morgan thought, Reid would probably end up covered in his blood and brain matter. He’d remember it forever. Would that matter? Morgan would be gone, no guilt in a fictional great beyond. He looked away from Reid.

“Derek, this is not how it has to go. Give me the gun.”

Would Reid touch his corpse after? Would he check his pulse, or would the hole in his head and his dead eyes be enough to convince him?

His hold on the gun must have loosened noticeably, because Reid’s hands slipped against his, deftly took the gun from his grasp and unloaded it, tossing it behind him where it landed heavily on the floor some way away. Morgan started to sob before he even realised Reid was still holding his hands in his long fingers, knees bent to draw him level with his friend.

“It’s okay, Morgan. It’s okay.”

It wasn’t okay, and he knew that Reid knew that.

“You should have killed me when I asked you to,” Morgan sobbed angrily, an accusation that made no sense; he had no right to be angry at Reid to refusing him that kind of mercy, but he was.

“This doesn’t have to destroy your life,” Reid said clearly, “this doesn’t have to destroy you.”

“I want to die! I don’t want to live with this!”

Morgan crumpled, and Reid had to grab his shoulders to stop him falling off the bed. He hooked his arms under the older man’s, bracing across his back for the best leverage as the other man went slack, sobbing. Reid made to draw back, to steady Morgan from the front with his hands, but as he did Morgan’s arms wrapped around him and he turned his face into his neck.

“Reid,” he mumbled.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Reid assured gently. “But I need you to sit up. Actually I need you to lie down, you should sleep. You’ll feel better if you sleep. Can you do that for me, Morgan?”

Reid kept his word; he didn’t go anywhere. He sat in the chair beside the bed as Morgan fretted, sobs weakening until eventually exhaustion took him. He moved just once to remove Morgan’s discarded gun, and to twitch the curtains shut as the dawn began to form in the sky. He remembered when he had had his mother institutionalised, and considered the very real possibility that he would have to do the same for his friend in the morning brought more suicidal ideation. He knew they could hold him involuntarily for 72 hours, and he would be safe from harming himself. But Reid didn’t know what Morgan needed, didn’t even believe there was a magical solution that would make things better. Reid saw cases on paper every day that were “worse”,  but none of them could compare to seeing Morgan victimised like that. The images of Morgan lying face down on the hardwood, covered in blood and semen would be scorched into his consciousness forever. The plea in the man’s voice when he’d asked Reid to kill him, the sound of him crying for help over the phone, how steady his hands had been with the barrel of his Glock pressed under his chin.

Some hours later, when Reid would normally have just got to work, he felt his phone vibrate. He stood up from the chair, and crossed out of the room so he didn’t disturb Morgan, who was still sleeping. He pushed the door closed just enough to muffle his voice, but left it open enough so Reid could still see his friend.

“Hotch,” He said quietly.

_“Reid, how was the night?”_

“Difficult,” he said, and then after a pause, “he tried to kill himself.”

_“What?”_

“Put his gun under his chin. I talked him down enough to disarm him.”

_“If he’s a suicide risk he needs to be admitted to a psychiatric unit.”_

“I know,” Reid nodded, watching Morgan move a little in his sleep. “He’s asleep. He won’t want to go to a unit, and I don’t want to make him worse.”

_“It may be the best option.”_

“I know. I’ll see how he is when he wakes up.”

_“Update me.”_

“I will.”

He snapped the phone shut and slipped back into the bedroom, taking up the bedside seat again.

**“There are some wounds that one can heal only by deepening them and making them worse.” - Villiers de I'Isle-Adam**


	4. Shower

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: this chapter deals graphically with the physical aftermath of a violent sexual assault.

**“In the meantime, I could withdraw to my room, could hide and sleep as if I were dead.” - Elizabeth Wurtzel**

Morgan could smell James all over him. His eyes snapped open with an accompanying gasp, and he had to blink a few times before he realised he was in his own bed. He could peer through his bruised eye now, the swelling having reduced a little, but it was even more tender when he lifted his fingers to inspect the damage.

“It looks worse than yesterday,” Reid said, and Morgan’s eyes moved to him, where he sat in the chair beside the bed. “Bruises tend to do that; don’t show the most substantial discolouration until a while after the damage.”

He was sore in awkward places, and he felt filthy as he moved, pushing away the sheets and pushed himself up. It still hurt, only now the pain was greater with more dull persistent aches than sharp pains. He bit back a struggling sound as he got up, his legs hurting worse than the previous day, his knees and ankles feeling weak and his tendons lighting up with pain.

“Don’t,” he snapped when Reid made to support him. “I need a shower.”

“Okay,” Reid nodded. He knew Morgan needed help, but he also knew he needed some of his pride salvaged. He watched him hobble into the bathroom and shut the door, waiting to hear the sound of the shower being turned on. He made an educated guess for where the spare bedding would be and changed Morgan’s sheets; there were tinges of blood on his pillow from residual bleeding.

He was putting the pillows back on the bed when he heard Morgan call his name.

Morgan was naked on the floor of the shower with both his knees pushed to the side, covering his modesty, and it was evident he had slid down the tile wall, unable to support himself.

“Morgan?” Reid asked gently. The man wasn’t looking at him as he stepped into the bathroom, just staring at the floor as the spray ran over his legs.

“Reid. I... I need you to... help... me.”

“Okay,” Reid said immediately, knowing that hesitation was not going to help. He took off his watch and rolled up his sleeves, putting the timepiece with his phone on the shelf above the sink. He crossed over to the shower, sliding the door open and kneeling next to his friend.

“I can’t...stand,” Morgan said, still staring numbly at the floor of the shower. “Can’t wash myself.”

“I’ll help you,” Reid said. Morgan offered his arm as if he expected Reid to grab it to pull him up, but he didn’t, instead reaching up to the shower shelving to grab a wash cloth and soap. “We’ll do what we can with you sitting, first,” he said softly.

“Don’t tell Hotch about this,” Morgan snapped, fierce anger with veins of clear panic through his words. Reid’s chest hurt.

“I wouldn’t, Morgan. I won’t. I’m your friend.”

As soon as Morgan didn’t even try to take the cloth from him, Reid knew this was more than Morgan asking for help because he was physically incapable of doing it himself; he wanted Reid to help him. Reid, whose arm was now soaked with water seeping down the material of his shirt, put his fingers gently under Morgan’s bruised chin, turning his face upwards. The older man’s gaze didn’t meet his as he carefully brushed the cloth under Morgan’s nose, cleaning away the dried blood around his nostrils. He moved down to his lips next, carefully cleaning the split there, as not to open the tender flesh again. He ran his thumb over the hair on the man’s jaw, loosening the blood dried amongst the bristles, using the cloth to help clean his jaw and chin and cheeks.

“Sorry,” he pre-empted, just before he moved his attention to Morgan’s eyes, having to rub the cloth over his bruises, making him pull away as a reflex. Reid kept a firm hold under his chin, knowing it was probably uncomfortable but he didn’t want Morgan to think he was hesitant doing something that was so important. He was mindful of the stitches on the man’s head as he washed away the blood, trying not to focus on the blood-tinged pink soapy water that he could see staining the knees of his gray slacks.

He was thorough, even noticing and eradicating the blood dried in the shells of Morgan’s ears. He really had no idea what Morgan was going through, but he remembered how dirty he had felt after Hankel, and how he had laid in the bottom of his bath with the shower beating down on his body for over an hour because he couldn’t stand for long on his bruised and broken feet. If Morgan felt anything like that, Reid knew he had to help the man cleanse physically before he could begin to heal psychologically.

Reid was still relatively dry on the side facing away from the shower as he gently rubbed the cloth over Morgan’s neck and shoulders and arms. He tried not to press too hard on the deep bruising on the man’s wrist as he took hold, turning each arm over to continue moving the cloth over his skin. There was bruising on his bicep where Reid held his arm up, exposing his underarms and the extensive bruising on his ribs; bruises on top of bruises. Morgan’s legs were just as discoloured, ugly purple that was almost black, green and mottled yellow, but there wasn’t as much blood. He had only seen bruising this extensive on corpses before.

“Can you stand?” Reid said finally, shifting from his knees to his feet, gripping Morgan at the elbows. It was not easy for the man to stand; he gripped Reid’s arms hard, his legs shook, and his face creased in pain and he almost slipped over twice before he was upright.

He angled the man to lean against the shower wall, let him grip his shoulders to keep him upright. The spray was coming right between them, soaking Reid’s clothes. The paler man washed his chest, mapping out the patterns of bruises across the shape of muscles. Lower, across his hips and the V shape of muscles towards his groin, and Reid’s hand slowed. He looked at Morgan, waiting patiently for him to make eye contact. It took almost two full minutes for Morgan to meet his gaze, his lips were tight and the eye that wasn’t swollen shut was shimmering with the hint of shamed tears, and his brow creased a little in a silent plea. The genius gave a small nod, and the other’s gaze fell away, his eyes closing as he exhaled slowly. Reid washed his genitals as quickly as his careful and efficient approach would allow, all the while wanting to scream in frustration; this was not the way he’d wanted to become intimately familiar with Morgan’s body, not as an act that while requested and consented to by Morgan, caused him further physical and psychological pain. It was not an easy or comfortable experience, but then Reid didn’t think it should be. As hard as he found it to do such an intimate favour, he couldn’t quantify how much worse it was for Morgan.

“Let me wash your back,” Reid said gently, and Morgan nodded without meeting his eyes. He turned, bracing his hands on the wall of the shower, the spray pouring down his back. Reid gripped his waist to steady him, ready to grab him around the middle if he fell, and began to push the cloth over Morgan’s strong back. The flesh was free of bruising for the most part, and his musculature was sculpted and defined. By the time he’d reached the small of his back, he could feel Morgan sagging, could hear his breath labouring a little with the pain of staying upright. The bruising began again in earnest over the man’s buttocks, older bruises layered with newer ones, a testament to the brutality of the assaults he’d been subjected to. It was with that in mind that Reid angled the nozzle of the shower so the stream of water ran over Morgan’s back and between the globes of his rear. The broader agent seemed to understand what Reid was hesitating about, because he forced himself to keep standing and buried his face in his arm against the wall.

“Fuck,” he breathed thickly.

“You’ve had recent anal trauma,” Reid said, shifting his grip a little on the man’s waist, making sure the rest of his body didn’t press against the other man’s, “cleansing the area with clean water should help to promote healing and avoid infection-”

“Just do it,” he muttered.

Reid was as gentle as he could be, but it still made his throat tighten when Morgan hissed in pain. Touching him so intimately had been a thing of fantasy, but this reality was awful. There was no shred of him that was glad to be there with Morgan in the shower, helping him to wash him so intimately because he was so injured and emotionally crippled he couldn’t take care of himself. The sight of the water around their feet streaked with a little blood made him feel sick, but he delicately continued to cleanse the most delicate flesh until the water ran clear.

When Reid gently pulled his hand away Morgan’s knees buckled, and as Reid grabbed him hard enough around the middle he knew it would hurt – but it was better than him falling – he was sure he heard the man choke back a sob.

Reid put Morgan’s arm around his shoulders to help him get out of the shower, leaving pools of water from his sopping wet clothes on the bathroom floor. He got towels and helped the other man back through to the bedroom, helping him sit on the edge of the bed. Morgan laboured with drying himself, looking a little less dazed than he had in the bathroom.

“Top draw,” he said, making Reid look over at him. “Got a spare pair of sweats and a jacket you can wear. The dryer’s downstairs.”

Reid understood well enough that Morgan was asking for privacy, and he didn’t argue, taking the clothes from the draw and leaving the bedroom with the memory of their most intimate and most horrific exchange mingled as one and burnt into his mind forever.

*

Reid had let Clooney out into the garden, fed him, and started cooking breakfast by the time Morgan managed to get downstairs.  It didn’t take him as long as it had to climb them the previous night, but it still sounded like he had difficulty. He limped into the kitchen, leaning on the counter island as soon as he reached it for support. Clooney came up to him, nudging his nose at his side. Morgan lowered his hand to stroke him, immediately feeling guilty for ignoring the dog the previous night. Across the kitchen Reid looked somewhat swamped in his clothes; the pants only just staying up even with elastic, the hoodie much too big for him, so much so he had to keep pushing the sleeves up his forearms as he cooked eggs in one pan and bacon in another, while coffee brewed and toast browned in the toaster.

“I never thought you’d be able to cook,” Morgan said, and swallowed awkwardly; his voice felt scratchy and uncomfortable in his throat. Reid turned away from the stove, offering one of his smiles that creased his face, sincere and warm to match the warmth permeating the kitchen.

“I went to college at twelve,” Reid offered, turning back to breakfast. “And with my mom... I was able to cook when I was quite young. Why don’t you go sit on the couch? Breakfast’s almost ready.”

Clooney sat himself beside Morgan’s leg by the sofa, resting his chin on his knee. As Reid brought two mugs of coffee and put them on the coffee table Morgan noticed the dog twitching at the slightest noise. It occurred to him the dog must have heard the commotion of the previous night – the night before that – he rubbed a hand over his face, realising how skewed his perception of time had become in the last days. Reid came in with two plates of food and cutlery, taking up a seat on the opposite end of the sofa to the other agent.

It wasn’t until Morgan began eating that he realised how hungry he was. He’d barely eaten the night before, and before that it had been almost thirty hours since he ate, which they did in silence. His physical state was a constant reminder of what had happened to him; there was no way to pretend it hadn’t happened, because even his lip twinged with pain with the motion of eating. He forced himself to concentrate on that, not wanting his mind to wander and remember, instead concentrating on the crispy bacon, the creamy scrambled eggs, and instead filled his mind with the thought that these were the best eggs he’d had in a long time. He’d had no idea Reid could cook, that Reid... Reid. Reid who was pretending not to watch him, Reid who had stood under the shower with him and held him up just half an hour ago.

“You took my gun.”

Reid had his fork halfway to his mouth when he paused and looked at him.

“Yes," he said. “Do you remember what you tried to do last night?”

Morgan didn’t say anything; of course he did.

“Do you know how many people commit suicide without previous signs they’re going to?” he asked, shovelling more food into his mouth.

“Would it help if I told you?” Reid asked. Then, as if he couldn’t help himself; “Thirty four percent of suicide attempts, successful or not, are committed by people without previous diagnosed mental illness, self injury or suicidal ideation. The phenomenon is actually more prevalent amongst law enforcement.”

Reid was still watching him as he continued to eat, not wanting to meet the man’s gaze.

“I’m not going to kill myself,” he said finally, around a mouthful of toast.

“Good,” Reid nodded, but clearly looked like it didn’t feel like enough. “Do you think it would help to talk to someone?”

“Oh,” he swallowed. “I thought...” he shook his head a little. “No. No. I don’t need to talk to anyone.”

Reid put his plate down on the coffee table, picking up his coffee and wrapping his hands around the warm mug.

“Morgan, you can talk to me. But there are specialist therapists that work with rape victims-”

“Don’t,” Morgan said, putting his plate down and easing himself back against the sofa with his own coffee.

“You are a victim, Morgan,” Reid said, without it sounding like an accusation or pity.

“I’m not pressing charges, Reid,” Morgan reminded him, drinking deeply from his mug.

“You might not even need to go to court if he pleads guilty. And with the evidence against him-”

“You think he won’t take the opportunity to humiliate me?” Morgan snapped. “That’s his favourite thing to do. You have no idea what I did, that he has pictures of. He would love to go to court and tell a jury about just what the big-FBI-agent was _willing_ to do.”

“Even if you don’t pursue the rape charge, you should let the authorities pursue him for assault. He broke into your home, Morgan. He’s still a danger to you because he wants to control you. Abusers don’t usually give up until the target of their abuse is dead, or the authorities intervene.”

Morgan knew Reid was right, and the thought that it wasn’t over even after what he’d been thought made him want to hunch into a ball and scream. Instead he fixed Reid with a look of forced nonchalance, picked up the TV remote and turned it on. Morgan could feel Reid watching him out of the corner of his eye, but eventually he got up and took their plates into the kitchen.

*

“Is he okay?” Garcia asked tentatively. Hotch had told them, and Garcia was the first to call; Reid was rather impressed she’d managed to hold off until mid-afternoon.

“He’s sleeping,” Reid said, looking over at Morgan’s prone form on the couch, his dog curled up on his legs.

“Hotch said last night he tried to...” her voice faded, and Reid pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers. “Oh please Reid, don’t leave him alone,” she pleaded, and Reid could hear the tears straining her voice.

“I won’t, Garcia,” he said, trying not to let it show he felt a little annoyed she could even consider that he didn’t know he needed to be there for Morgan. “I don’t think he’s a danger to himself,” he said. “He needs time.”

“I’m tracking the bastard’s credit cards. If he uses it anywhere we’ll find him.”

Reid nodded, and then remembered she couldn’t see him.

“Good.”

“We-” she faltered, and Reid waited patiently. “We saw the crime scene photos. Of Morgan’s house. Hotch was really angry, the local police sent in cleanup before the team could get there... he wanted the team to see before Morgan got home. And nobody wanted to disturb Morgan like that now he’s home...”

“The cleanup didn’t compromise the evidence, did it?”

“No,” she said.  “D’you... do you think he’d want to talk to me?”

“I don’t know,” Reid said, although he was pretty sure Morgan wouldn’t want to. “I’ll tell him you called.”

Morgan’s sleep left Reid with his own thoughts. The last thing he wanted to do was leave Morgan alone, but at the same time he wanted to be with the team so he could help them find the person responsible for what had happened. But he knew Morgan was most at risk now, from his own reaction to his ordeal and James returning. He glanced at his pistol in his holster on the dining table as he crossed to the lounge window and peered out, and considered he wouldn’t be surprised if there was an unmarked police car keeping watch on the house.

Morgan didn’t wake until the smell of food apparently roused him at close to seven in the evening, though Clooney finally moving to pester Reid for scraps may have helped.

“You still here?” Morgan murmured as he washed his hands at the sink.

“How are you feeling?” Reid asked instead of answering.

“Fine.” They both knew it was a lie.

By ten Morgan’s body ached and he wanted to lie down again, so he announced he was going to bed. He didn’t give much thought to whether he didn’t ask Reid to leave because he didn’t want to argue if he disagreed, or whether he actually wanted him to stay.

The next morning brought a similar routine, of Morgan coming downstairs to breakfast and coffee, though Reid was back in the clothes he’d left to dry the previous day. Reid tried to engage him in conversation, but Morgan was so tired he largely ignored him as he ate, only half-finishing what Reid had cooked before he set it aside in favour of coffee. His friend looked concerned, and he ignored it.

“I want you to give me my gun,” Morgan said, drinking from his coffee, “and leave.”

“What?” Reid asked, swallowing his own mouthful of coffee.

“I know you’ve been here to keep an eye on me, but I need to be alone.” He ran a hand over his battered face, squeezed the bruised bridge of his nose. He’d barely slept the night before, and he hadn’t dared to have another shower because it hurt to stand for extended periods, and the thought of asking for help again was mortifying. “I need time. I need to be alone.”

“Morgan...”

“I’m not going to hurt myself. I’m asking you, Reid, but I will make you leave if you don’t.”

Reid didn’t look happy as he got up and retrieved Morgan’s firearm from the sideboard. He’d have found it eventually, but Reid had obviously put it there fearing he’d use it to paint the ceiling with his brain matter as he had intended.  He handed it over with the clip separate, and Morgan put them on his coffee table like that, not wanting to clip them together even though he wanted it loaded and within his reach at all times, for fear Reid would refuse to leave if he suspected he might do something drastic again.

“You know you can call me,” he said. “If you need to.”

“I’m just gonna chill out until I’m healed up,” he said dismissively, rising with some difficulty from the couch. Morgan shuffled towards the hall, and Reid took the hint, slipping his shoes on and gathering up his phone and holster.

“I don’t mind staying,” Reid tried as Morgan opened the door. “If you want me to.”

“I don’t,” he said bluntly. “I don’t want to die, don’t worry. I’m sure I can expect someone to call me tomorrow to check up on me. Bye Reid.” To his credit, Reid tried his best not to look put-out by Morgan’s dismissal, and didn’t flinch as the door was slammed on him. He limped through to the kitchen and let Clooney out too, into the garden, and shut him out, and let a silence permeated the house.

Morgan knocked over his coffee mug when he sat down heavily on the couch again, swore, but ignored it for the time being. He’d clean it when he’d rested his body, it wasn’t worth expending his energy on. He watched the hot liquid spreading over the wooden coffee table and dripping onto the hardwood floor, and wondered just what he was meant to do now. He wondered how long he’d have to sleep to forget what had happened; when the bruises were gone and his body was healed, would he be able to move on then? He tried to remember how he had moved on from what Buford had done to him, when it occurred to him that he hadn’t; he’d ignored it until it had almost ruined his career, he’d ignored it until he’d ended up with a man who treated him like Buford had. He’d ignored it and let other boys be abused in the same way. Morgan understood serial abusers better than most people, he knew he was not the first lover James had hurt and he wouldn’t be the last.

Sitting on his couch and listening to the sound of lukewarm coffee dripping onto the floor, he knew that the price of doing what he needed to survive – ignoring it, forgetting it – would be the respect of his team and his friends. His complicity in letting a cycle of abuse continue, this time his choice to stand aside and let it happen plain for everyone to see, would save his sanity, and condemn another person to torment and maybe even death. He was going to have to live with that.

**“I get up and pace the room, as if I can leave my guilt behind me. But it tracks me as I walk, an ugly shadow made by myself.” - Rosamund Lupton**


	5. Whiskey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Morgan isn't coping.

**“God has mercifully ordered that the human brain works slowly; first the blow, hours afterwards the bruise.” - Walter de la Mare**

Morgan ignored the knock the first time. He had no interest in company, it felt invasive enough that his team kept phoning him. He’d answered only one call; Hotch midweek, and the conversation had consisted mainly of Morgan telling him he didn’t need to be constantly checked up on. The second knock alerted Clooney, who rushed into the hallway and started to bark; it was a fierce and frantic sound, and it had been for some months. Gone were the days when Clooney greeted visitors with curious enthusiasm unless his owner’s body language gave him cause for concern; now everyone was a potential threat.

“Shh, Clooney,” he called as he limped towards the hall. “Quiet, boy.”

He checked the peep hole and was not too surprised to recognise Reid’s distorted form through the magnifying glass. He strokes the dog to try to get him to calm down as he unlocked the door, but he was antsy and whimpered as Morgan cracked the door open.

“Hi Morgan,” Reid said, a smile pulling at his mouth.

The man intended to dismiss him quickly, but something inside of him relented and he opened the door further, holding Clooney back with his leg. The dog stopped barking when he recognised the new arrival, but even his newly focused affection didn’t totally distract Reid’s gaze as Morgan relocked the door. There had been several additions to his security in the six days since Reid had left; as well as the original lock and alarm there was now a top and bottom slide bolt lock, a security chain and a dead bolt.

He pocketed the keys and slunk back through to the living room, taking up his half glass of whiskey from the wooden coffee table. He took a drink as he watched Reid’s eyes take everything in; the three empty liquor bottles and the half full one on the table, the ashtray and open cigarette packet.

“How are you doing, Morgan?” the man asked hesitantly.

“Fine.” He knew it was small talk, and he knew ‘fine’ was the correct response. People tended not to really want to know if you weren’t.

Reid crossed his arms over his chest as Morgan turned on the spot, reaching for a white cardboard pack of medication on the shelf above the fireplace. The out of rhythm exhale he noticed he was sure was in reaction to the man spotting that he had his gun tucked into the back of his tracksuit pants. He wondered why he was surprised, when he himself kept his gun so close and obvious on his belt when they worked because it made him feel safer. It was exactly what Morgan was doing.

“Morgan,” he continued to sound hesitant as Morgan pushed two pills through their foil packet and put them into his mouth, throwing his head back and then easing their passage with whiskey, “you shouldn’t be mixing painkillers with alcohol.”

He had no time to wonder why there was a sudden hot stab of anger in his chest, but it twisted hard between his ribs and before he could rationalise it his fingers slipped on the white packet and he threw it with as much force as its mass would allow at the other man. It hit Reid square in the chest and he fumbled to catch it, and Morgan felt a fleeting disappointment that it hadn’t hit him in his stupid concerned kind face. Morgan swilled his drink and didn’t look at the other man, but could hear the packets of tablets moving as Reid turned the box over in his hands.

“PEP,” Reid said blankly. “Post-exposure prophylaxis. This is... this is an emergency antiretroviral treatment for HIV exposure.”

Morgan let himself meet Reid’s eyes, and masked how much it hurt to see the man look crestfallen, because it was a stark reminder of the dire nature of the situation he was facing.

“I got tested, and it came back negative,” he said thickly, drinking more to try and sooth the sudden dry tightness of his throat. “I have to get tested again in three months. Then six. Then a year. But for another three weeks I have that medication. And I feel sick, and tired, and I have no idea if _he_ has HIV and I’ve been exposed. So I’m _fine_ ,” he added bitterly.

He downed his drink and moved over to the sofa to drop heavily on it and reach for the bottle again. Reid came and joined him on the couch, watching him intently. He could feel the alcohol starting to make it necessary for him to put more effort into making his movements look natural, and he was glad for the approaching numbness, because he body still ached.

“You want one?” Morgan offered shortly, gesturing the bottle as he finished pouring whiskey to half fill his tumbler.

“I drove here,” Reid said, but Morgan was already filling another glass. He took it when it was offered, but Morgan doubted he’d drink it.

Morgan took the television off mute and tried to get comfortable – the press of his gun into his back was a constant reminder that he wasn’t safe. He scratched idly at the scruffy facial hair he hadn’t shaved in a week, which would become a full beard soon. He simply didn’t care, and shaving took energy and effort. It would also reveal more of the bruising still discolouring his face, even if the swelling had greatly reduced. He had no reason to shave to look presentable; he still had another fortnight of compulsory medical absence, he had no intention of trying to score in a club, and Reid certainly didn’t want him.

Any fleeting hope he’d held that perhaps that might have been the case had been irradiated; so many times in their time together days earlier Reid could have done something, and Morgan would have permitted anything. If, while he was holding him up in the shower, he had pinned him to the wall and fucked him, Morgan would have taken it just because he knew Reid was his friend, and he loved him. He shook his head a little, his brain rather sluggishly realising how ridiculous and twisted that thought was.

Reid was his friend, he wasn’t James; it probably hadn’t even crossed his mind as he supported him that it was a situation that he could have easily made sexual advances with Morgan so incapacitated. Reid was not an abuser, it was James who was, Morgan reminded himself as he drank deeply from his glass. Even if by some rare chance Reid had ever thought about them together, the older knew he would never act on it now, because Morgan was damaged. That wouldn’t be Reid’s reasoning, it would be pure and good, not wanting in any way to take advantage of what had happened, but to Morgan it still felt like the damage he had suffered had also destroyed the last fleeting hope he’d had that the man he was in love with could ever feel the same.

“Why are you here?” Morgan asked, dragging his eyes away from the light and colour blaring from the television to look at Reid.

“Because I’m your friend, Morgan,” he said gently.

“Everyone else got the hint and stayed away.”

“You didn’t tell everyone else about this, you told me. You told me about James, you called me when he attacked you, and the last time I was here you implied you wanted to talk to me.”

“I don’t know what to say,” he grumbled into his drink.

“You know Hotch is going to make you talk to a councillor before he lets you come back to work, don’t you?”

Morgan flinched. He hadn’t considered that. Instead of answering he took a drink from his glass again, concentrating on the feeling of the alcohol coursing down his sore throat.

“Do you think I should have known better?” he asked suddenly, turning his face towards a surprised Reid.

“What?”

“I’m a profiler. I should have known, right?”

“This isn’t your fault, Morgan.”

“I let him beat the crap out of me, Reid!” he sighed.

“You didn’t ‘let’ him do anything,” the man said patiently.

“I knew he was dangerous. I’m not blind, I’m not stupid. We profile guys like him every day. And I still... I still...” When Reid stayed quiet and let him talk, his gaze moved again, focusing instead on the whiskey in his glass. “It got bad so fast, and it’s not like he even told me he loved me. So it wasn’t like the typical model of violence, I wasn’t staying because I loved him or because he said he loved me. But I agreed to everything, thinking...” he shook his head a little. “So he had leverage to make me stay so fast. And it was still better than nothing, than lying to myself. I wanted a dude to touch me and not hurt me since the last man who touched me was Carl Buford, and I ended up here.”

He refilled his glass, knowing full well it was lubricating his inhibitions about talking.

“Maybe it’s just meant to hurt,” he muttered bitterly into his glass.

“It’s not,” Reid said. “Morgan, you don’t deserve for it to hurt, and it’s not meant to.”

He reached out, and for a second seemed like he was going to touch Morgan’s arm, but he withdrew the hand. Morgan threw the half-full glass of whiskey back and went to pour another.

“Take it easy, Morgan.”

“Leave it Reid, I need this,” he snapped. “You have no idea how much it helps with the damn pain.”

“I don’t know the pain you’re going through,” he admitted. “But I do know what’s it’s like to use substance to dull it, remember?”

Morgan nodded his understanding; he did remember, and he remembered feelings so useless to help him. He wondered if that was how Reid felt right now.

“After Hankel,” Morgan said, “did it ever feel weird that everything else in life kept moving? I mean I know the world isn’t gonna stop for what happened but... I did. And everything else is still going, but I stopped after. After coming home from the hospital it’s been like I’m in some kind of time capsule. I haven’t left this damn house.”

He reached for the open packet of cigarettes on the table, and lit one. Reid’s eyes followed him, but he didn’t comment even though the man knew he didn’t smoke. Morgan couldn’t say for sure why he’d started; he’d found the mostly full packet forgotten in a draw, discarded from entertaining a friend who smoked.  The acrid bite of the smoke passing into his lungs was already strangely appealing.

“Want one?” he shook the packet in Reid’s direction, knowing he’d decline. He did, and Morgan tossed the packet back onto the table and leaned back, breathing out the first lungful of smoke with a sigh.

“It takes seven seconds for nicotine to get from lungs to brain.” He murmured, surprised Reid wasn’t already telling him the same.

“The increase of acetylcholine and beta-endorphin reduces pain and anxiety,” Reid offered, by way of explaining why he hadn’t commented on Morgan’s behaviour; even if they both knew it was short sighted, they knew why smoking seemed to help. “Nicotine also extends dopamine effects. It suppresses appetite and speeds metabolism.”

“Good.” Morgan shrugged, topping up his glass with whiskey.

“When was the last time you ate, Morgan?” Reid asked, concern clear in his voice.

“Uuhh,” Morgan sounded into his whiskey, “I don’t know.”

“You should. I can make you something, what do-”

“I’m not hungry, Reid.”

“With the amount of alcohol you seem set on consuming, you should really-”

“Should what?” Morgan snapped, the cigarette perched between fingers that clutched his glass forgotten, the ash disturbed by a jerky movement and dusting his thigh. “Tell me Reid. Tell me what I should be doing. Because I have no damn idea. No clue what the fuck I’m meant to do now, how I’m meant to deal. Am I meant to stay in bed? Cry? See a therapist? Talk about it? Do I go get over it? And how? How am I meant to do that?” He could feel his words slurring together, but it kept coming. “Will I get over it once I’m healed? Once I forget? When I don’t feel dirty all the time? When I can look in the mirror without wanting to tear my own damn face off?”

“Morgan-”

“I don’t know what I’m meant to do, Reid.” He tried to take another drink, but he spluttered into it and tried very hard to keep his emotions in check. “Everybody knows. The whole team knows, how am I meant to deal with them knowing, you knowing?”

“Morgan, it doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t change that you’re my friend and my colleague.”

“It changes everything!” he argued, gesturing with his glass. “How am I meant to go back to the BAU when I couldn’t even tell he was dangerous. No, that I knew, and I still stayed. I-I-” he paused, closing his eyes as he tried to focus his way through a sudden bubble of nausea. “I knew he was dangerous and I still got involved with him. What kind of profiler does that make me? What kind of person does that make me? I – oh, shit-”

The wave of nausea was sudden, and he pushed himself up, almost tripping on Reid’s leg on his way through to the nearest sensible place to vomit: the kitchen sink. He braced his hands either side and angled his face, unaware Reid had followed him until he felt the man take the half glass of whiskey and the still lit cigarette from his hand, allowing him a better grip on the sink. He could feel Reid standing close to him as he heaved and vomited into the sink; it had been so long since he’d eaten anything of note he was essentially expelling whiskey and bile. Nearby Clooney whined, and Reid shushed him.

“Get out,” he croaked when he could manage it, head bent low.

“Morgan-”

“Get out, Reid!” he yelled.

“I’m not-”

“Get out!” he bellowed, bracing his hands harder as he felt his body shake with the force of nausea. He didn’t want Reid there to witness it. “OUT, REID!”

Clooney, picking up on Morgan’s sudden change in attitude was caught between a whimper and a growl, and Morgan couldn’t be sure whether it was that or his shouting that made Reid retreat. He didn’t look up at him as he felt his presence leave the kitchen, trying to concentrate on not vomiting again.

As he vomited again he wished Reid didn’t respect him quite so much as to leave at his request.

*

“Morgan?”

The sound of Prentiss’ shock made Reid look up from his case file, just as surprised to see Morgan putting his go-bag on his chair. He was a mess: his v-neck was buttoned wrong, exposing the discoloration still showing on his chest, he hadn’t shaved since Reid had last seen him and was sporting a beard that extended messily under his chin, his usually cropped hair was starting to grow out; he’d evidently hurt his hand, because there was a bandage wrapped around the palm, he was holding himself at an angle that Reid suspected was a limp he’d have noticed if he’d seen him walk into the bullpen, and he reeked of alcohol.

“Morgan, what are you doing here?”

“I work here,” he told her, his word just slurred enough that both Reid and Prentiss exchanged a worried look.

It wasn’t long before Hotch was out of his office, heading towards them with purpose.

“Morgan.” His voice was firm but low, putting himself close to the other man as he tried to keep the disturbance to a minimum. None of the other agents working in the bullpen were paying them much attention, either because they hadn’t noticed, or realised it would be better to ignore them. “You’re still on medical leave; you haven’t been cleared to come back to work by a doctor or a counsellor, or by me.”

“I can do my job, Hotch,” Morgan said. Reid watched his shoulders squaring, and the flicker of pain as he straightened to face off their boss.

“You’ve been drinking.” Morgan said nothing. “And you drove here? Morgan.”

Reid cast his eyes quickly across to Prentiss, who was biting at her thumb nail as she watched the exchange. He was only thankful that Garcia, JJ and Rossi weren’t there to also bear witness.

“I need to come back to work, Hotch,” Morgan said firmly.

“You’ll be lucky if I don’t suspend you,” he warned. “I’m going to have someone drive you home.”

“I don’t need to be driven home,” Morgan growled. Hotch didn’t look away from his agent.

“Reid. Take Morgan home. We can cope without you for a while.”

He wasn’t all that surprised that Hotch called on him in the face of Morgan’s belligerence considering the part he’d played in the aftermath of Morgan’s attack. He wasn’t surprised either by Morgan’s venom.

“I don’t need babysitting, Hotch.”

“Clearly you do, if you’re driving drunk and coming to work looking like you’ve gone ten rounds with -” Hotch seemed to realise too late his phrase might be problematic, but it was too late. Morgan’s shoulders shook in a hollow laugh. He’d already made to leave by the time Reid had grabbed his bag up, casting a look back to Hotch long enough to see the concern on his face. Reid slipped into the elevator with him before the door shut completely.

“Morgan, man, what are you doing?”

“I’m in an elevator with a nosy fucking bastard,” he murmured, running a hand over his face. Reid didn’t take it to heart; he couldn’t afford to.

“You know you can’t come back yet.”

“I’ll decide when I come back.”

“No, you won’t.”

Reid could see the full extent of Morgan’s limp when they reached the parking level, then he hurried to catch up and put himself in front of Morgan.

“You’re not driving, Morgan,” he said firmly. Morgan tried to sidestep him, taking his keys out of his pocket and pressing to unlock his car. “I’m taking you home. Give me the keys.”

He was mentally preparing for Morgan to refuse, considering how quick he’d have to be to snatch them away when Morgan tossed them to him and climbed into the passenger side of his car.

Morgan didn’t speak, and Reid let him have the silence.

Reid was probably more surprised than he ought to be that Morgan’s house was in shambles. It was messy and dirty, and smelt heavily of alcohol and smoke. The first thing Morgan did was snatch up a half-empty bottle of vodka and tipped it back into his mouth.

“Don’t, Morgan,” Reid cringed.

“What?”

“Morgan I think you need to talk to someone.”

“Nothing to say.”

“You need to talk to a professional. Your risky behaviour is-”

“What, Doctor Reid? A fucked up way of coping?” Morgan laughed. “A reaction to trauma that’s spiral out of control? I know this. I know because I’ve been profiling it for damn near a decade. Give me some fucking credit.”

Reid watched as Morgan began to lift the bottle again, loose between his fingers, and Reid moved quickly to take it off him, turning his body away as Morgan tried to grab it back.

“Reid!”

“You’re drinking too much, Morgan.” He took a few steps back, Morgan tried to follow and almost lost his balance, reaching out to the back of the couch to steady himself.

“I don’t care. I don’t care!”

“Come on, sit down,” Reid said, ushering Morgan around to the sofa. He lolled back against it, a heavy hand rubbing his face.

“I just want to forget,” Morgan slurred. “Make it all go away. But it doesn’t go away. Drinking, sleeping. Can’t sleep without dreaming, remembering. Drinking makes it blurry, but doesn’t make it go away.”

“There are people you can see, who specialise in trauma survivors,” Reid offered gently, then hesitated. “Abuse survivors. Rape survivors.”

“This is surviving, is it? This is what surviving feels like?” Morgan laughed again, and it quickly turned into a sob as tears formed in his eyes, and he covered his face with his hands, curling into himself. “I can’t do this, Reid. Can’t go on.”

The fear was sudden and gripping, hearing his friend talk like that. For the briefest of moments he wondered if there was a part of him that wanted to act on an urge of selfish need, but he dismissed it as he closed the distance between them and slipped his arm around Morgan’s back. Immediately the man leant into him, still trying to quiet his sobs, but apparently too far gone to worry about his pride enough to resist the physical comfort. There were no words that seemed appropriate, especially when Reid wondered when the last time Morgan had been held my someone without being hurt.

**“There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.” - Laurell K. Hamilton**


	6. Therapy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warnings specific to this chapter: discussion of many themes: sex, rape, sexual abuse of a child, violence, internalised homophobia, gender essentialism, suicide.
> 
> For the sake of this story, although it's not series-specific, Morgan has never been to therapy and the events of 'Restoration' haven't happened yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After a long time, I'm back with an update to this fic. I have a plan in place to finish it, to bring it to the conclusion I want to, but I can't give it a proper timeframe for completion. This fic is hard, gruelling, sometimes triggering, and always draining for me to write, so please don't enquire about when the next update will be. It could be weeks, it could be months. I'll try not to make it over another year until the next part, thought.
> 
> If you follow my fics you may have noticed I've been uploading a lot - most of these are older fics I've been transferring from LJ as I'm making AO3 my fanfic homebase now. If you're looking for something lighter, easier and/or smuttier, I have lots of other fics on offer.
> 
> There is also a mix for this fic [on my tumblr](http://justjasper.tumblr.com/post/5439898209/listen-download).

“ **There are many ways of getting strong, sometimes talking is the best way.” -** **Andre Agassi**

It was thinking about his mother that had inspired him to clean the house. He hadn't spoken to her in weeks, and although no news was good news, he knew she'd be worried. If she could have seen the state of his house, she'd have been upset; so he cleaned up, threw away the open cigarette packet he had left, and put all the booze away in the bar. Reid was still coming to check up on him almost every day, and calling when he couldn't make it, and he helped with the last of it.

“Don't take this as a breakthrough,” he said, “I just hate living in a mess almost as much as I hate living right now.”

Reid didn't laugh at his dark joke, and watched him with concern for a few seconds before he went back to polishing the coffee table.

“I didn't mean I'm going to kill myself,” he said, folding dry clothes. “I don't want to die, Reid, I'm just not... living's hard right now.”

“I'm worried about you,” Reid said quietly. “I really think you need to talk to a professional.”

“There's a therapist Hotch has in mind to see me,” he admitted. He hadn't talked about his phone conversations with their boss with Reid, because their content made him generally feel awful; plans for his return, or least what had to come before that. Hotch wasn't going to clear him without him attending counselling, so he had to start somewhere.

“That's good,” Reid said as he straightened.

“I need to get back to work,” Morgan sighed. “I'm going mad around here.”

“Have you left the house since-” Reid paused, and Morgan stiffened, “-in the last few weeks?”

He shrugged. “The PEP knocked me on my ass.” It wasn't entirely a lie, but it didn't account for the fact that he had simply not wanted to go beyond his own home.

“Do you want to go out to eat?” Reid asked. “We can get something from a vendor in the park so Clooney can have a proper walk.”

The mention of Clooney was likely calculated, because if he hadn't said it Morgan might have said no, but Clooney did need a proper walk; running around in the garden wasn't giving him the exercise he needed.

“Okay,” he nodded. “Let me go put him on the leash.”

An hour later they were eating burritos on a park bench while Clooney chased and returned a tennis ball. It was the only way Morgan had been able to coax Clooney to leave his side, and even now he hurried back with it and needed lots of touching as reassurance. Morgan felt terrible that he'd let his dog become conditioned by the abuse he'd witnessed, made him scared and uneasy. They were pretty out in the open, but the whole way Morgan hadn't felt totally safe, as if James would appear out of nowhere and call him to heel like a dog, and he'd go.

“You okay?” Reid asked.

“Good burrito,” Morgan said honestly. He'd been living off microwave meals and takeaway, the fresh-local-green-sustainable-responsible burrito was a break from that.

“So are you resigned to therapy as a condition of your return, or do you actually think it'll be useful?”

“Well,” he started as he threw the ball for Clooney, “it couldn't make things worse, could it? I mean, for all the shit I've got none of it's repressed, I'm not going to suddenly remember even more crap. I already know my crap. I can't forget any of it.”

“I know you could breeze through therapy,” Reid said, no judgement in his voice, “answer all the questions in just the right way to make them clear you after a couple of meetings. I did that, after Hankel. I still regret it, because I didn't deal with it properly.”

“So you're saying I should try therapy properly?”

“I can't compare what we went through, not really. But I don't want you to regret this, or miss an opportunity that might help. Like you said, it won't make it worse.”

“Yeah,” Morgan said, busying himself with another bite of burrito.

*

“ _Hey, honey.”_

Morgan recognised the silky smooth voice right away, and felt his knees tremble.

“James.”

“ _How have you been? I've missed you.”_

“You've missed me,” Morgan repeated, flabbergasted.

“ _I've been worried about you. After what I did... I’m so sorry.”_

Morgan was taken aback at that; all the times James had hurt him, he'd never apologised before. He'd never fit the common model of abusive cycles, but perhaps the man was desperate.

“ _You got me so mad, I was so scared what we had was going to be over, I... overreacted.”_

“Are you kidding me?”

“ _I'm sorry, Derek!”_ James begun to sound upset, genuinely upset, and Morgan couldn't completely identify the feeling that spurred in him. _“I just got so angry! I'm sorry! How long are you going to make me feel bad, Derek? I feel like shit, and I just want things to be okay.”_

Morgan didn't know what to say. He knew he should hang up, but he couldn't bring himself to.

“ _I love you,”_ James said.

“You what?”

“ _I love you. I'm sorry about what happened, I feel awful. Meet me.”_

“No.”

“ _Please meet me, Derek. At 8, at that bar we went to on our first date.”_

“No, James.”

“ _I'll be there, Derek. You better be too.”_

Morgan hung up, fumbled to get his phone back into his pocket, and grabbed the nearest surface to steady himself. He knew he couldn't go back, didn't want to, that even if things were fine for a time the abuse would start again. But nobody had ever told him they loved him, not in the way that James just had.

Maybe that was worth the abuse.

\---

When Reid arrived with Chinese food, Morgan looked like he was ready to go out. He'd put on jeans instead of sweats, and he had his shoes on.

“Where are you going?” he asked. “I brought food.”

“I didn't ask you to,” Morgan said, though he didn't seem angry. There was a hint of nervous excitement in his voice, and he was drunk again.

“Where are you going?” Reid repeated.

“Out.” Morgan cast a nervous glance towards the door.

“Where?”

“Just out.”

“What's going on?”

“Reid-”

“And you're meeting him?” he asked, incredulous, as the thought occurred. “You're going to cave his face in, right?”

“You don't understand, Reid,” Morgan sighed. “He told me he loves me.”

“What?”

“He loves me,” Morgan said, smiling a smile that looked desperately hopeful. “He said so. He loves me.”

“No, he doesn't.” Reid tried to keep his voice calm, and not to scoff at the ridiculousness of it. Morgan wasn't stupid, and this wasn't blind stupidity – going back to an abuser never was. It was way more complicated than that, and Morgan was still fragile, that much was plain.

“You don't know what you're talking about!” Morgan snapped.

“Morgan, if you go back to him, he is going to kill you!”

“You don't know that! He loves me!” Morgan was shouting, and tried to push past Reid into the hallway.

“He doesn't love you! You don't do this to somebody you love! You don't beat the crap out of someone you love! You don't rape somebody you love!”

“What the hell would you know about loving anybody?!” Morgan retorted.

Reid bit back the urge to tell him exactly what he knew about loving someone, and stood his ground. He took a breath in through his nose, and held Morgan's gaze.

“I know you want it to go away,” he started.

“Don't profile me, Reid!”

“I know you don't want to think about it, and you'll accept anything to have it go away, but I also know you don't believe it. Do you? You don't believe he loves you, do you? Or that this is going to make it stop hurting?”

“I don't know,” Morgan said, shoulders slumping. “I don't want to believe it but part of me does. I know it's fucked up.”

“You're drunk, you can't drive,” Reid said, as he reached for Morgan's upper arm, gripping him firmly. “But I'm asking you to choose not to go. Listen to the part of you that knows it's not a good idea, because that part's right. Trust it.”

Morgan swayed on his feet, glanced at the hallway, but then to Reid's relief he nodded.

“Okay. But I get to pick the movie.”

The movie served as a good distraction as they ate Chinese food; they talked about the effects, the actors, the story. It was easy, and it was a distraction from all the questions Reid wanted to ask to ascertain how Morgan was doing. As they lulled into silence, it turned out Morgan was more forthcoming than he expected.

“I know he'd hurt me again,” he said suddenly, still watching the TV. “I'm not an idiot. I know it might be good for a while but the same thing would happen again, only I'd feel even more trapped because I went back when I should have known better. I know all this, but when he told me he loved me I really considered going back.”

“Do you actually think he loves you?” Reid asked, trying to keep his voice neutral, soft.

“Not-” Morgan turned his face to look at Reid, resting back on the sofa. “Not in the way I want to be loved.”

Reid fought the selfish urge to offer, to tell Morgan that he loved him without condition; it wasn't fair to do that after everything Morgan had been through and was still dealing with.

“He just hasn't got tired of me yet, I guess,” Morgan mused. “He called. That's when he told me. But he didn't threaten me. That's what I thought would happen.”

“Maybe it was a latch-ditch attempt before he moves on,” Reid offered, allowing Morgan to slide into profiling his ex.

“Don't, I can't think about that; about him hurting someone else. I want him to leave me alone, but it's sick to hope he finds someone else to focus on. It feels like it's my fault.”

“It's not,” Reid said softly, as he realised that along the back of the couch their fingertips were touching. He didn't move his hand, not wanting to draw attention to it and make Morgan think touching him was a bad thing. “It's not your fault, and it's okay to want him gone. That doesn't make you a bad person, to want him to move on.”

“Hotch still wants me to file charges,” Morgan muttered.

“I've got to say, I agree with him.”

Morgan sighed heavily, looking away.

“A positive rape kit and a record of your injuries are on file, and it's not stuff that can be explained away,” Reid went on. “Any lawyer with half a brain would tell him to plead guilty so it doesn't have to go to a full trial and would take a few years off his sentence. But he'd go to prison, Morgan, and you wouldn't have to fear for your life.”

“What if he fought it? He's an accountant for loaded clients, he manages hedgefunds, he's got money. He could afford a shark of a lawyer to drag me through the mud.”

“Even if he tries it, he can't go against the evidence of that specific event.”

“But then I have to recount what happened. First when I file charges, then in court if it goes there,” Morgan said, almost a moan. “It's bad enough thinking about doing that in therapy.”

“You're starting therapy soon?” Reid asked, changing the subject just slightly. Badgering Morgan about filing charges was upsetting him, and there would be plenty of people to push him about it, including a therapist.

“I have a session on Monday.”

“That's good.”

“It's just to meet and see if he's a good fit.”

“I hope he is,” Reid said, smiling at his friend, unconsciously brushing his fingers over Morgan' knuckles.

*

“This is your third session,” the therapist said, “and you haven’t asked me when I'll sign you off yet. Have you decided these sessions are a help, or have you just realised you can't sweet talk me into it?”

His name was Eduardo Velasco, a heavy, latino man in his sixties with a receding salt-and-pepper hairline and a thick, trimmed beard that reminded him of Rossi's. Morgan had googled him before the first session, and he'd published several papers on trauma and mental illness in men in relation to sexual assault, and when he'd been scanning his work he'd been sure Reid had once quoted part of the paper during a case.

“Can I ask you a question?” Morgan went with, instead of answering Velasco's.

“Yes,” he nodded.

“Have you been raped?” He tried to keep his body loose; he didn't want it to sound like an insult, but at the same time he'd been wondering about it since he'd met the man. Velasco leaned into his arm braced against the side of his chair opposite Morgan, holding his gaze calmly.

“Yes.”

“So you know what you're talking about.” Morgan felt his stomach knot at the same time he felt a wave of relief. “You haven't just studied case files and talked to victims, you speak from experience.”

“Don't be mistaken, I've read thousands of anecdotal accounts of rape and sexual assault. I've studied and collated them. Everyone's experience is different, but yes, I feel like my own trauma gives me a unique understanding and approach to the dynamics of similar situations.”

Morgan nodded, leaning forward with his arms on his knees. “I'm sorry.”

“You're not the first patient to ask me,” he reassured. “Would you like to continue the conversation we were having in our last session?”

“No,” Morgan shook his head. “I wanna... make a proper go at this.”

“Okay.”

“So I think you need to know that that wasn't the first time I've been raped.” Morgan couldn't meet the therapist's eyes as he let out a long breath through his nose as he realised that was the first time he'd called it plainly what it was. “I don't just mean that event, I mean James wasn't the first person. When I was a kid the guy who ran the youth center molested me. It went the whole way. I mean, _rape_.”

He waited, because he didn't know where to start. He'd never spoken it aloud, never strung the details together.

“How old were you when the abuse began?”

“Eleven,” Morgan said quietly.

“How did it start?”

“My dad died and he got me out of trouble. He was a father figure, I trusted him. He took me to his cabin in the summer and got me drunk so he could touch me.”

“How old were you the first time he did to you what you consider to be rape?”

Morgan considered the question, and how it reflected his own mentality about compartmentalising the abuse. Everything could be lessened, reduced, even that. Call it non-consensual, unwanted, mistake, forced; everything sounded less serious than rape.

“Twelve.”

“Can you tell me about what happened?”

Morgan felt his stomach twist, and his brow furrow. Did a therapist really need that information? How much could he really gather from the intimate details of a child being raped? The questions just have shown on his face, or at least been anticipated, because Velasco's next words were matter-of-fact but neutral.

“You don't have to relay it to me in explicit detail, Derek, but any detail helps to give context in regards to the specific events that brought you here.”

“It was at the cabin. He got me drunk and made me put a condom on him and he raped me on the sofa that squeaked. We'd been watching Bugs Bunny, and the video playing was playing the whole time. Afterwards, he called me son and when I wouldn't stop crying, he sent me to bed.”

He'd never been able to sit through a Bugs Bunny cartoon since.

“How long did the abuse go on for?”

“Until I left for college,” Morgan said, with a huff of a hollow laugh through his nose. “Once I hit sixteen, it got a lot less frequent. He liked preteens and pubescent boys; I think I got too old. But he still knew he could get away with it occasionally when I was all that was available. He's in prison now for raping and killing other boys.”

“When did that happen?”

“A few years ago.”

“Did you tell anyone what he'd done to you?”

“It was our investigation that caught him, it came out,” Morgan said as he leaned back in his chair. “He tried to frame me for the murders, and I confronted him. I never had to say anything directly to my team, but they're profilers, they worked it out.”

“Have you ever talked to any of them about it?”

“No.”

“Have you ever talked to anyone about it?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

“'Okay'? What does that mean?”

“I'm just considering together everything you've told me.”

“What, so you can say that the fact I never told anyone about being molested is why I didn't tell anyone about being abused by James? That if I had told when I was a kid, I wouldn't be in this position now?”

“Is that what you think?” Velasco asked, raising an eyebrow slightly.

He knew the tricks of the trade, so he should have expected him to turn the question around on him, but it caught him somewhat off guard.

“I think... I think a lot would be different if Buford hadn't abused me.”

“Like what?”

“I wouldn't have fought that I'm gay. Not as much. I spent a lot of time thinking he'd made me gay, then once I'd decided he hadn't I thought he'd influenced me. Still... I'm still not sure that he didn't. It sounds stupid, and I know being gay isn't a choice, but I also know that things like that do effect sexual development. So I pushed it away for a long time, I didn't even start thinking I could have a life as a gay man until last year.”

“You met James as you were starting to explore your sexuality?”

“Yeah, and I didn't have a clue what I was doing,” Morgan huffed, gesturing with an arm. “He did. I'm forty, I have a job that makes a social life difficult at best, I wanted a stupid romance and I didn't think anyone would put up with me. And he-” Morgan sunk in his seat a little, allowing himself to speak freely. “He was dazzling. Charming, attractive, nice, he took control when I didn't know what to do. I had no experience; I was so out of my depth I couldn't even fake it.”

“Do you think that's why he approached you? He could sense your inexperience?”

“Probably. I was stewing in a lot of bullshit, and it worked for him. Internalised shit I'd let myself believe, stuff I'd convinced myself was true, he backed it up.”

“Like what?”

Morgan shrugged, feeling embarrassed to finally be vocalising it. “Top and bottom stuff. Sex stuff. Thinking if I ever topped someone I'd hurt them, that I'd be like Buford. Most of the time, more than before, I know it's stupid but the idea of being with a man like that makes me feel sick. Having that much power over someone... I didn't want to initiate anything because what if they didn't want to do it but I couldn't stop?”

“You're worried you'd ignore someone's communication of non-consent?”

“No!” he snapped, ruffled. “I mean, I don't know how to do that stuff, and I know I'm a big guy. What if I was with him and he wanted to say no but he was intimidated? What if I didn't pick up on it? That's why I can't be that, I'm not in control of it. James knew that and he took control like I need.”

Velasco looked at him for a long time; it was a considering look while he waited to see if Morgan would continue.

“Did you have sexual interactions with women before accepting that you were gay?”

“Yeah. A few over the years,” Morgan murmured.

“Did these encounters involve penetrative sex?”

“Yeah,” he said, wondering where this line of questioning was going.

“Did you ever encounter any issues with ignoring their communication of consent?”

“No.”

“Gender and assumed sexual anatomy differences aside, how are those experiences different from potential encounters with male sexual partners?”

“It's just different. The power dynamic is different.”

“Is it?”

“Yeah,” he said, but the fact that Velasco was pushing this left him unsure. “With women... sex is normal. I don't mean 'normal',” he corrected, “I mean common. Sex with a man... it's not just not standard, is it? I mean a woman having sex isn't submitting, it's just the only way it can really go with a guy. There's nothing wrong with women having as much sex as they want. When it's two guys someone has to give it up.”

“So you don't believe that women engaging in penetrative sex with a man is degrading-” Velasco summarised.

“No.”

“-but a man engaging in penetrative sex with another man is submitting, and therefore degraded by the act.”

“I-” Morgan frowned. The therapist echoing his views made them seem strange and uncomfortable.

“Do you think that is inherent to anal sex, or coloured by the fact you've only experienced that act during rape?”

“Hey, before James start abusing me, we did it when I wanted it.”

“Considering the extent of his abuse, are you sure no amount of coercion was involved in those encounters? Did you enjoy the act?”

“No,” Morgan admitted. “But I did consent, because he wanted to do it. And that's just what you do when you care about someone, even if you don't want to do it, and I cared about him. Convinced myself of that, anyway.”

“Is that what the man who abused you as a child told you? That performing unwanted sex acts is something you do for people you care about?”

Morgan considered the words, taking a few long breaths in and out through his nose as he unwittingly tapped his foot up and down.

“Not in those words exactly, but basically, yeah.”

“Do you think anal sex is an integral part of a meaningful gay relationship?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Why?”

“Because it's sex,” Morgan said, bordering on confused at the question. “I'm not asexual, so sex is gonna be part of any relationship I have.”

“Do you think there is an obligation of sex in a relationship?”

“Now you're making it sound creepy.”

“Do you think the idea that someone is obligated to have sex they don't want or enjoy in order to sustain a meaningful relationship is creepy?”

“Yes!”

“But these are the only types of relationships you've experienced, correct?”

“I-” He could feel the prickling heat of threatening tears behind his eyelids. “Fuck. I'm so warped, aren't I?”

“You've been through a lot,” Velasco said reassuringly. “Sorting through it all isn't going to be simple.”

“No kidding,” Morgan murmured, but as he breathed in a calming breath and leaned back in the chair again, he considered how much clearer some of his thoughts were now. Perhaps therapy would help.

“ **Our wounds are often the openings into the best and most beautiful part of us.” - David Richo**


	7. Chicago

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Morgan ends up in Chicago.

**“To an untrained eye, need and love were as easily mistaken for each other as the real master's painting and a forgery.” ― Deb Caletti**

The more Morgan talked to his therapist, Velasco, the more he found to say.

“How are you feeling about the anti-depressants?”

“Better,” Morgan shrugged. “I've stopped thinking about killing myself most of the time.”

“That's still an issue for you?”

“Not an 'issue,’ I'm not going to do it,” Morgan said. “I still think about it sometimes, though, yeah. But I'm a lot better than I was the first session. If that session had gone wrong, I was pretty set on ending it all.”

“How might it have gone wrong?”

He shrugged again. “If you'd said the wrong thing.”

“What would have been the wrong thing?”

“I mean, if you'd told me I was responsible for the abuse or something.”

“Is that something you expect people to believe?”

“It's something I know people believe. But hearing it from a therapist or – would have sealed it.”

“Or who?”

“What?” Morgan met the man's eye, considering his last statement. “Oh – my team. Thinking about them believing it was my fault... I don't think I could have taken it.”

“Do you think the medication has helped?”

“Yeah. It's cleared some of the fog.”

“How so?”

““I've been thinking about James a lot. When you talked about every part of relationship being abusive, I... I thought you were psycho-babbling. I didn't want to believe I could have just walked into an abusive relationship. But the more I think about it, the more I get it. He knew what to look for in a partner that he could isolate and abuse, and I was that. I did so much of the work for him though, convincing myself he was a good thing in my life. He didn't even offer me anything, you know? He didn't promise me a life; he didn't give me anything to hope for. All he did was make it clear he was entitled to fuck me, and that was going to be the arrangement as long as he decided. And I was so desperate, I twisted it around and told myself that's what I wanted, and that's what I deserved. But that's not what I want, I know that now.”

“What do you want?”

“I want someone who loves me,” he said, because that much he was sure of. “I want things to be equal, and honest. I don't want to be hurt. I want to be with someone who doesn't want to hurt me.”

“And who do you want that relationship with?“

Morgan considered him for a moment, and the fact that he'd committed himself to being completely honest in his therapy.

“Reid. I've probably been in love with him since I first met him.”

“Do you believe in love at first sight?”

“Not really. I mean there was an attraction right from the start.”

“Do you think he has any romantic feelings towards you?”

“No.”

“Have you ever asked him?”

“I'm not his type.”

“What's his type?”

“I don't know, probably guys who are out, for one thing. Guys who don't have abusive ex-boyfriends or sexual complexes. Guys without baggage.”

“Does he know how you feel?”

“Hell no. I didn't even know how I felt until last year, not really. I'm not ruining a friendship over some stupid crush.”

“You said you were in love with him; that seems more than a crush.”

“We're friends; he's my best friend. The best friend I've ever had, I can't ruin that by putting him in that position. He doesn't want me.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I wouldn't want me.”

“Why?”

“He pulled the gun out from under my chin,” Morgan snapped, suddenly on edge, his chest tightening. “He held me up in the shower and washed my torn up ass – if I’d had to do that for him I wouldn't want him, not in the same way, I couldn't. Everything changed, even if he felt something before that, it all changed.”

“Why does that change things?”

“It changes... it changes the power dynamic. We're not just friends now, he's... he's like my carer. I'm fucked up, and he's my carer. I'm just an obligation now. Sooner rather than later, he's going to get tired of dealing with me.”

“Why?”

“Because I am not worth this much effort!” Morgan huffed, leaning back in his seat. “I'm not worth it.”

“Why not?”

“Because I can't be fixed, it's too late.”

“You think you're broken?”

“I don't think it,” Morgan said firmly, “I know it. I am.”

“Then what needs to be fixed, Derek?”

“All of me.”

Velasco paused, watching him, and then he shifted in his chair, and held Morgan's gaze. “Okay. Where do you think we should start?”

*

When he'd finally started calling his mother again, he hadn't told her anything, just said he had been busy. He knew it was vague and she didn't believe it, but she didn't push him for detail, even though she sounded worried about him every time they talked now.

“You doing okay, mom?”

“ _I'm fine, baby. I've only just got in, I was running errands. I got your package, I'll open it in a minute.”_

Morgan felt the bottom drop out of his stomach.

“What package?”

“ _You tell me. It's pretty flat, like documents or something?”_

“Momma,” he said, trying to sound firm but calm. “I need you not to open that.”

“ _What?”_

“Mom, put it somewhere safe and don't open it under any circumstances.”

“ _Derek, what's going on?”_

“It's not dangerous, Mom, but I need for you to promise me you won't open it.”

“ _Okay.”_

“I need you to say it, to promise me.”

“ _I promise, baby, I won't open it.”_

“Good. I'm going to fly out and see you.”

“ _You sure it's not dangerous?”_

“I'll fly out tonight or tomorrow, okay? I haven't seen you in too long, Ma.”

“ _Derek, is it dangerous?”_

“No, Mama. I promise it isn't.”

*

“Hotch said you're coming back to work,” Reid said, smiling at him as he took another slice of pizza, absently brushing his foot against Morgan's calf as they sat together on the sofa.

It was so easy with Morgan, but every new piece of physical contact felt like a victory. When they'd rearranged themselves on the couch at the start of the film they ended up with their feet touching, brushing together, hands resting against each other's arm until pizza had given them something between them. Their friendship had become more and more intimate during the past months, a mixture of reaction and necessity; it wasn't leading to what he wanted, to what he's always hoped, but if being able to touch someone and be touched without being hurt was something Morgan needed, Reid was glad to be that.

“Yeah, next week sometime.”

“You're done with therapy?”

“Nope,” he said shortly; clearly he didn't want to talk about it, but his tone remained relaxed so Reid tried to make it obvious he understood not to press the topic.

“Oh, okay.”

“But first I'm going away for a few days.”

“Where are you going?”

“Just to see my mom. It's been a while.”

The way Morgan's gaze shifted to the television, a little too casual, left Reid wondering if that was true. Morgan seemed better, in less pain, and he didn't want to push sensitive topics and derail his recovery. He was still in therapy by choice, which was a good sign; he had to trust that a professional was giving him the help he needed. All the same, there was a part of him that wanted Morgan to want to tell him what was troubling him.

“It's James,” Morgan said into the lull.

“What about him?” Reid asked, carefully, as he knew how fragile the moments were when Morgan opened up. The man's voice was small when he responded.

“I think he sent photos of me to my Mom.”

“What?” Reid felt his heart jump and his anger swell.

“I called her and she talked about a package from me, and I didn't send her anything. I asked her not to open it. That's where I'm going. I can't let her see.”

As he gestured, his hands were shaking, and without planning Reid reached out and took them, covering them with his own and holding gently.

“If you want, I can come with you.”

“I have to do this on my own.”

“No you don't, Morgan. I'm your friend, and if you want someone there as a buffer, or just to keep you company I'll be it, I'll be that.”

Morgan held his gaze, searching, and after a long moment he blinked and nodded minutely.

“Okay. Okay, I'd like that.”

Reid smiled, still clutching his hands; he wanted desperately to offer to be more.

*

“Derek!” Fran sighed with relief as she let her son and Reid into her home. “You've had me so worried.”

“I'm sorry,” he said.

“Doctor Reid, isn't it?” Fran asked as she let Morgan go from a tight hug, turning her attention to Reid.

“Hello, Mrs Morgan.”

“Call me Fran, dear,” she chided gently as she took their coats. “Now, are you going to tell me what all this is about?”

“Do you have the package?”

“I put it in your room. It has a lot of boxes in there that I keep meaning to get rid of, so I made up the beds in your sisters' old room for you two.”

“Thanks,” Morgan nodded, looking towards his room. Fran made to follow him as he took a step towards the hall, and he stopped. “Mama, wait here. Can you make tea?”

“Oh,” she said, nodding and looking worried. “Yes, of course, baby.”

Morgan smiled weakly, and headed down the small hallway towards his old bedroom, with Reid following him.

His bedroom had changed over the years since he'd left, but it was still memorable; even with all the boxes, the files, the printer and shredder and an old vacuum, it was still full of memories. It had been a haven and hell, giving him solitude and isolation with the knowledge of everything he was going through as a teenager. It almost seemed fitting that this would play out there too. On top of one of the boxes was a slim package addressed to his mother with a Maryland postmark.

“He's still close,” Morgan said, unsurprised but still sickened as he turned it over, noting that the seal was indeed intact. Reid perched on the edge of the desk, keeping his distance and himself out of range of seeing the contents of the package.

There were seven glossy print photographs, and he was the subject of all of them. Each of the memories were vivid, the sting of a grip too tight, a position that hurt, words that made him hate himself, things he did to please a man who only wanted to break him, all fresh like a wound except – he let out a shuddering breath he'd been holding and pulled the photos against his chest.

“If I hadn't been on the phone with her when she said she had a package from me-” he shook his head, trying to get rid of tears that stung at his eyes.

“What are you going to do with them? Keep them?” Reid asked.

“No.” He gestured to the shredder by the desk. “Got her that a few Christmases ago for shredding documents. Diamond-cut, you couldn't possibly piece together anything you put through it.”

Reid nodded, moving off the desk to find the shredder's plug and a socket.

As Reid pretended to study the spines of books on a shelf, Morgan fed each photo through the shredder, trying to take comfort in the sound of the images being destroyed, but knowing they were only copies.

“I need to talk to her,” he said, straightening up.

“Do you want me to leave for a while? Or stay in here?”

“No, it's okay. You know it all anyway. I never wanted it to happen like this.”

Fran looked up from the table as they came up the hallway, making to stand.

“Don't get up, mom, I have some stuff I need to talk to you about,” he said as he took up the seat on the opposite side of the table. She pushed a mug of tea across to him, and he accepted it, while Reid took his to the nearby sofa, facing away from the kitchen annex.

“What's wrong, baby?”

“I don't know where to start,” he murmured, wrapping his hands around the hot mug, considering. Part of him was confident she would take it in stride, even if it was all going to be more than he ever planned to tell her, but part off him was still petrified she wouldn't be able to accept what – who – he was. He'd come this far, and he couldn't go back.

“Momma, I'm gay.”

“Oh, Derek,” she sighed, relieved, “Is that what you've been worried to tell me? I love you no matter what. Nothing could make me not love you, silly.” She laughed, the sound a tinkling of relief and ease as she reached out and took his hands across the table. If that had been all he had to tell her, maybe he'd have laughed too, relieved to find he'd worried for nothing. But there was more; he pulled back his hands, wrapping them around the mug once more.

“I was in a relationship with a man-”

“You have a boyfriend? Oh baby, I'm so happy for you!”

“Mom, please!” he pleaded, voice cracking. “Just listen to me.” He inhaled through his nose and exalted through his mouth before he went on. “I was in a relationship with a man. He- he hit me.”

Fran gasped, putting her hands up to her mouth.

“He hit me a lot,” he went on before witnessing his mother's breaking heart could stop him. “He was abusive, physically and mentally and- and after I broke up with him he attacked me. He broke into my house and he- fuck - sorry – he, he- he forced me.” He couldn't say it, couldn't say the word, wouldn't tell his mother he'd been raped; the look on her face made it clear she knew anyway. His throat felt tight like he was going to vomit. “He put me in the hospital, and I'm not okay. I'm still not okay. That package was pictures of him hurting me. I couldn't let you find out like that.”

“My baby,” she said, beginning to sob as she got up from the table and hurried around to Morgan. “My baby boy,” she cried as she pulled him against her chest. He wrapped his arms around her, closing his eyes and fighting his own tears as she wrapped herself around him. Her smell was familiar and comforting, and he clung harder. She stroked his hair, sniffling as she cradled him.

“I'm so sorry, Derek.”

“It's not your fault,” he said into her sweater.

“Maybe I could have stopped you getting hurt, if I'd said something,” she went on. “When you changed, you stopped calling, I should have known something was wrong, like I should have known something was wrong when you were a kid.”

“Mom, don't blame yourself like that,” he said. “Please don't do that.”

She began to sob again, a miserable sound as she did her best to hold him close to her, as if she could fix it by absorbing his pain. Her hair tickled him as she bent to kiss the top of his head, still shuddering with sobs.

After a few long moments she pulled back, and held his face in her hands. “I love you more than you can imagine, Derek,” she told him, eyes red with tears, “I will always love you, and I will always feel like I failed when you get hurt.”

*

They had talked for a long time; Morgan hadn't given his mother explicit details, but an overview of how the relationship with James had started, progressed and ended, and what had happened since. She had burst into tears again when Morgan told her he'd almost killed himself, and as Morgan had detailed Reid's role in helping him get through everything she'd attached onto him with a hug; Reid, to his credit, was pliant and let her hold him until she was ready to let go.

When they were all talked out they helped Fran to make dinner, they ate at the table and cleaned up, making small talk and taking comfort in each other's company.

Eventually the day drew to a close and Fran excused herself to bed; Morgan and Reid stayed up to watch the end of a film they'd been idly paying attention to, and then headed for his sisters' old room. They changed into sleepwear without looking at each other, offering privacy without having to draw attention to it, though once they were done Morgan found himself smiling at Reid's faded, baggy _Thunderbirds_ t-shirt.

 

They mumbled their goodnights and climbed into the two beds, cool, fresh sheets quickly warming to their bodies. Morgan wrapped himself up and tried to clear his head so he could sleep, but after the day he'd had to felt like an impossible task. James had tried to out him in the worst possible way to his mother, and he hated to think what else he might try. He'd tried not to think about it too much, but now he wondered if the pictures of him were already on the internet, circulating and out there forever. He swallowed around the lump forming in his throat and turned over. He'd come so far, but it wasn't over while James was still out there. He'd never really feel safe with him out there, but at least now his mother knew.

As he buried his face in the pillow he could feel his eyes stinging with the attempt to keep his tears at bay, but the more he tried the more shortly his breath came until he let out a ragged sob into the pillow. His chest ached with the effort of keeping quiet, but apparently it wasn't enough.

“Morgan, what's happening?”

“She knows,” he gasped into the pillow, too muffled to be heard, but said all the same. It brought fresh tears with it.

“Derek?” His voice was closer, but Morgan couldn't stop sobbing, pressing the pillow against his face. He moved his mouth out of the material, his breath hitching.

“I'm sorry, I'm sorry.”

“Derek, what do you need?”

“Hold me, please, I need-” he tried to take a deep breath, but it shuddered through him and just made the crying worse. “Please, I need something, I need... can you hold me, please?” He couldn't remember the last time he'd actually sought physical contact as a source of comfort, but it was all he wanted now.

He felt the bed dip and move as Reid clambered over him onto it, placing himself between Morgan's back and the wall, dipping under the covers to spoon himself against his back, wrapping his long arms around him.

“I've got you, Derek,” he said quietly.

“Thanks, I-” he started, but began to sob in earnest. Reid squeezed him tighter and he clung to him, desperate for the physical contact to sooth him. Now that he couldn't very well bury his face he had his hands clamped over his mouth to hide the sobs, and it muffled his words. “She knows!”

“Who? Your mom? You wanted to tell her, didn't you?”

“I know! I'm happy she knows, but she knows _everything_ , and I just-” He didn't know how to put into words the rush of emotions, the relief, the shame, and all the things he couldn't quite identify.

“I've got you,” Reid repeated.

“I'm sorry,” Morgan sobbed, trying to regain his composure. “I don't know why I ask you to hold me, I just needed you.”

“Hugging releases oxytocin,” Reid said softly, his voice at the top of Morgan's spine, “and has shown to lower blood pressure. Oxytocin reduces inflammation and speeds wound healing. It lowers stress and anxiety.”

He found it soothing; the words, the contact, the reassurance, and slowly his crying quietened as Reid softly relayed what he knew about oxytocin's effects, loosely citing a few studies as he held Morgan close to him.

“It promotes pair-bonding, can suppress the nervous system. Hug therapy has shown noted success amongst people with autism who report favourably on its use for anxiety management.”

He put his arm over's Reid, stroking his skin absently as his breath hitched and he breathed through the last of his tears.

“The pictures,” he said, preparing to give voice to the ache in his chest. “There were a couple I- I didn't recognise.” The words began to tumble out, as he felt himself building towards tears again. “I'm asleep in one of them but in the other my eyes are open but I don't remember it and I think, maybe, he drugged me. So who knows what else he did apart from take obscene pictures of me?”

He dissolved into sobs again, and Reid squeezed him tighter, wrapped himself around him more securely.

“I'm sorry this happened to you,” Reid murmured. “You deserve better, Derek.”

“I don't know how to process the idea that I was drugged and I don't know what happened to me. Not knowing... he's always going to hold that power over me, knowing the extent of what he's done.”

“You're safe now,” Reid reassured. “He's never going to hurt you again; you are never going to have to feel like that ever again. Nobody will ever treat you like that again, because I won't let them.”

“Thanks,” Morgan sniffled, squeezing Reid's hand where it lay under his, rested on his stomach.

“I mean it,” Reid murmured. “I will never let anyone hurt you again.”

Exhausted from a day of pain and revelations, Morgan relaxed against Reid's body and tried to believe it.

*

Morgan woke up warm and calm, with Reid's arm around his chest, his hand latched onto his t-shirt. As he recalled the night before, he wondered if it was safe to let himself believe that Reid felt some measure of what he did, something romantic, something beyond platonic. The way Reid interacted with him was unique, not shared amongst all his friendships, at least he thought so. He hadn't felt safe or cared about like this in a long time; bed sharing with James had not been pleasant; if they weren't having sex, he didn't like to touch, and Morgan would be pushed to the edge of the bed. A weight was gone from his soul, he thought, now his mother knew. It didn't fix anything, not really, but it felt like a start. He felt good for the first time in a long time.

He turned over, which roused Reid, who dragged his hand down his side as he made a noise and tried to stay near to Morgan's warmth. He slowly opened his eyes, blinking sleepily.

“Hi.”

“Hi,” Morgan echoed.

Reid flex his hand where it had come to rest on Morgan's hip, and in response Morgan scooted a few inches closer and braced his hand gently against Reid's elbow, encouraging him to keep the hand there. He relaxed, and let his legs come into contact with Morgan's, a sock-covered foot stroking gentle against an exposed calf where his pants had bunched up. It was warm in their cocoon of blankets and limbs, and Reid looked at him sleepily as he smiled, their faces only inches apart.

“Thank you for staying,” Morgan murmured, “and for coming with me.”

“There's nowhere else I could be,” Reid said, as if what he'd done wasn't above and beyond. Before he could think twice about it, Morgan moved his head forward across the pillow, closing his eyes, and pressed his mouth softly to the corner's of Reid's.

One, then two seconds later, he felt Reid turn his face minutely and kiss him on the mouth. They initiated a series of soft, lingering kisses, fingertips gripping ever so slight on each other's body, flush with the new sensation. Their lips caught against each other, but they didn't rush the shallow, sweet exchanges, drawing breath against each other's mouths as they pulled each other closer. He was kissing the man he loved in his sister's childhood bed, wrapped up with him as the smell of breakfast wafted through the apartment. He'd imagined it hundreds of times, when he was still allowing him to do so, what a first kiss would be like; it was always spur of the moment, frantic; this was relaxed and gentle, no urgency in their movements, no sense that the moment was at risk of fading away.

Reid's hand stroked up his side and up his back, skittering over the fabric of his t-shirt as he nudged his nose against Morgan's, seeking to align their lips again. He couldn't think how he'd expected Reid to kiss, couldn't think of anything else except the soft pink skin, the delicate flush of Reid's cheeks he saw in the stolen glances from under heavy eyelids, his long delicate eyelashes. He hadn't expect soft, or sweet, or delicate; he'd never had anyone touch him like this in his entire life, and is that moment he would be happy for it to go on for all time.

He wasn't sure how long they lay there together, holding each other and kissing softly, long minutes melting into each other, but it came to a slow stop when they were interrupted by a faint call.

“Breakfast in 5!” They heard Fran announce into the hallway.

“She doesn't do sleeping in,” Morgan chuckled softly, bumping his nose against Reid's. “She always said if we wanted longer in bed, we had to go to bed earlier.” A little reluctantly, he pushed himself up, stretched out his arms and rolling his shoulders.

“Our flight is at one, anyway,” Reid said, stretching out his legs under the bedsheets, hair splayed out on the pillow in the most beautiful way.

Morgan leant down and kissed him, a last lingering one before he pulled away again, swung his legs out and got up from the bed, stretching as he went. He felt happy and calm, warm and peaceful, like something fundamental had changed in the universe, and for the first time in a long time, he wasn't scared of what might happen next.

**“A kiss is a secret which takes the lips for the ear.” ― Edmond Rostand**


	8. Kisses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They have to talk about Chicago.

**“Our wounds are often the openings into the best and most beautiful part of us.” ― David Richo**

They had a solid week of a local case that started the day Morgan returned to work. They were frazzled, tired, and Morgan and Reid hadn't been able to spend any time together until the case wrapped and they both turned down suggestions of drinks from the rest of the group, and instead wound up at Morgan's home, set on ordering food and intending to talk. If he didn't concentrate too hard, he could almost forget the scene he'd walked in on months ago, he could pretend the living room where they spent time together wasn't also the site of the worst thing that had ever happened to his best friend, his – something more, now, perhaps. He set about taking out his contact lenses in favour of his glasses as Morgan ordered food from his laptop. Once Morgan had always preferred the phone even though ordering online was easier, because of his affinity for people and his talent for scoring them free side orders with his charm, but since James, Reid had never seen him order over the phone.

"We should talk about Chicago," Morgan said as he closed his laptop and came in from the kitchen. Reid's stomach clenched.

"Yeah," he nodded, standing and folding his arms across his chest and scuffing a socked foot across Morgan’s wooden floor. He had to voice the thought that had been nagging at him since they'd returned. "I think transference is natural in this situation."

"What?" Morgan said, looking at him with disbelief.

"It's understandable, after everything you've been through, and that I’ve been in close proximity this whole time, that you're experience a transference of feelings for me," Reid said, and he hated himself for it. But he couldn't face the idea that Morgan would cling to him out of desperation, only to realise that he didn't really feel that way. He couldn't bear it for either of them.

Morgan was looking at him, brow furrowed but apparently calm. "No," he said eventually. "No. You are my friend, Spencer. I know you, and I know you wouldn't have kissed me back in Chicago if you thought you were just indulging my misplaced feelings. You are not that guy. I get you, and that's the only reason I am not _so_ angry right now that you'd even suggest that."

"Derek, I'm-"

"Spencer-" Morgan interrupted, holding up a hand gingerly. "This is not transference. I am _in love with you_ , okay? I have felt this way before I could even understand it. I love you. And I'm sorry if that's too much, but in Chicago I know you felt something, because I don't believe you'd have kissed me otherwise. I have to believe it."

"Why didn't you tell me?" Reid asked quietly, his throat tight.

"What?"

"Before. That you had romantic feelings for me."

"I didn't know what they were," Morgan said helplessly. "When I started to get a grasp on them, I couldn't tell you because I wasn't out, and you didn't feel the same, and then James came along."

"Damn it," Reid muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"Spencer?"

"I did, Derek," he said, feeling angry tears prickling at his eyes at the unfairness of it all. "I did. I do. For _years_. I just never realised... damn it." He pressed his fist against his forehead, plagued with the thoughts of what if; what if they'd realised they had feelings for each other earlier, before James? Would Derek hadn't had to suffer through any of that?

"Did what? Do what?" Morgan implored.

"Feel the same," Reid said. "I mean," he swallowed, and then made sure he was looking at Morgan, "I'm in love with you, too. And if I'd realised-"

"Spencer, don't," Morgan shook his head, and he was smiling nervously, relief clear in him. "We can't change it. But we're on the same page now, aren't we? Where do we go from here?"

"I don't know," Reid shrugged, smiling awkwardly in return, chest still clenched at the thought of all that wasted time. "But we both want this to go somewhere, don't we?"

"I-" Morgan shrugged helplessly, and gave a little laugh. "I didn't think that far."

"I guess I didn't, either."

"You want a drink?" Morgan suggested. "I've got some of those terrible root beers you like in the fridge."

"Sure," Reid nodded.

They didn't speak for a while; Reid settled down on the sofa and Morgan bought their drinks in, Clooney at his heel. The silence wasn't tense, but there was anticipation in the air between them; something big and important had happened, but neither of them knew quite how to go forward from there. The arrival of food provided a distraction as they sorted cartons and dished out their food right there at the coffee table, Clooney with his head on Reid's knee, easily picking him out as the easier mark.

"So," Reid said as the show they'd been watching went to a commercial and he surreptitiously gave Clooney a piece of chicken, "are we dating now?"

"I guess," Morgan said. "Dating suggests we're testing the waters, though. I'm sure about what I want."

"You are?" Reid asked, glancing over.

"Chicago, every day," he said, looking sideways at him as he lifted his chopsticks to his mouth.

"A painful revelation and kisses in the morning?" Reid teased, hoping it wasn't too early to say such things. Luckily, Morgan chuckled, looking down at his food.

"Nah, but the bit where I felt safe," he said, pushing his chopsticks around his plate.

"You did?"

"Yeah, I only feel safe with you around."

Reid looked across in time to see Morgan shovelling noodles into his mouth, perhaps in order to excuse himself from having to explain. Reid didn't push for an explanation, though; it felt amazing to know Morgan felt safe with him, that he made the man feel that way, but that also meant that the rest of the time he must feel unsafe, which was troubling.

"If we're going to skip calling this 'dating' and go right to being 'together', I'd still like to go on dates," he said, by way of keeping the conversation on topic but away from such hard to say things.

"Yeah?"

"Of course. There's this restaurant I’ve always wanted to try, but I’ve never been because," he grinned sheepishly, casting a glance over at Morgan, "I always imagined it's where I’d ask you to go with me if I ever asked you out."

He could feel his cheeks colouring, but Morgan’s smile was so warm and sincere in response; this was actually happening, things were finally working out for them.

"Seeing as we're in a confessing mood," Morgan started, "I've had a whole hypothetical first date with you planned for a long time."

"You have?"

"Mhm. I don't wanna say too much, since now we've got our act together I can actually see it through."

As their focus drifted back to the TV, Reid inched his foot over to stroke against Morgan, more deliberately contact that ever, and he felt the man lean against him ever so slightly. It was nice, familiar, with the newness of their declaration of love. He could hardly believe after everything, despite it all, they felt the same way. Everything that had gone before was still significant, it still mattered, but in front of the TV eating Chinese with the man he had been in love with for most of his adult life who loved him back was astounding and wonderful.

"Will you stay tonight?" Morgan asked as he set his empty plate down on the coffee table, drawing Reid out of his thoughts. "If you want, I mean."

"Yeah," Reid nodded. "I'd like to stay with you."

Some time later, after they'd cleared away dinner, retired upstairs and changed into sleepwear, Reid tried not to think about the last time he'd been in Morgan's bedroom, instead focused on the way Morgan was looking at him in the lamplight; intense and lingering, but something about his posture spoke of apprehension and the inherent vulnerability Reid had found over the last months. He was about to tug at the hem of his baggy t-shirt just as Morgan reached out, fingers coming into contact with his hand at his side. Immediately Reid’s own fingers moved into the contact, and it was all he could do to stop himself surging forward and folding himself against Morgan, the touch was so inviting; a physical manifestation of the great gentleness he knew the man to have. Their fingers laced, and Reid inched forward to close the distance between them. His other hand skittered up Morgan's clothed forearm, his bicep, his shoulder, to rest against his neck.

"Can I kiss you?" he asked, thumb tracing the man's jaw. Morgan gripped his hand more firmly and nodded, so Reid tilted he head down and pressed his mouth gently to Morgan's like he'd been longing to do again since Chicago. As their lips folded against each other in a gentle but eager exchange, Morgan's free hand lifted to rest on Reid's waist and Spencer eased himself forward slightly, the pad of his thumb pressing against Morgan's jaw, relishing the little give of the skin underneath.

Kissing him was better than he could have imagined. He'd imagined sweet, savoured kisses, but nothing his mind conjured could prepare himself for the softness of Morgan's lips against his, his caught, shallow breath, the heat from his body, or the way his fingers spread out at his waist and made him feel anchored to the world in a way he never had before. His usual mile-a-minute brain had slowed to a soft, regular tick, or a heartbeat, steady and repeating thoughts slowly unravelling the realisation that this was what it felt like to love someone and be loved.

"I'm glad you're here," Morgan said as they parted.

"I'm glad to be here."

"Do you wanna?" Morgan jerked his head in the direction of the bed, and Reid nodded as they parted fully, removing hands from the places they felt like they belonged.

"Do you want to spoon like in Chicago?" Reid asked, sensing the slight hesitation. The other man smiled and hummed his approval.

In Morgan's bed, Reid settled behind Morgan, slipping his arm around the man's middle. Derek relaxed against him and it felt wonderful to feel him settle so quickly, his arm resting along Spencer's, linking their fingers. Knowing that Morgan felt safe like this meant everything; he knew he would do everything he could to make sure Morgan could feel completely safe again. For the night all he could do was hold him, but as Morgan murmured his name as his slipped into sleep, for that moment it seemed like enough.

*

"It's been three weeks since you began a romantic relationship with Spencer," Velasco said from the chair opposite Morgan. "How are things going?"

"Good." He nodded. "I'm moving. Into one of my renovation projects; it needs a few finishing touches, but I need the fresh start, I think. I wanna be able to sit and watch TV without thinking about what happened on the floor just there."

"A move can be stressful."

"One of the most stressful things in life," Morgan agreed. "Some statistic or other has it up there with deaths and having kids. Spencer's been helping me, and he's full of facts about these kinda things."

"How is the relationship specifically going?" Velasco clarified patiently.

"It’s- I think that it's good," Morgan nodded along. "I'm happy. I'm really happy." He felt a grin forming at his mouth, and he went with it. "It's like a dream, sometimes, when I think about it all working out. I thought I'd spend my whole life loving him and knowing he didn't want me that way. It's... a hell of a thing to adjust to. But I'm adjusting, because when he tells me he loves me, I believe him."

"It's good to hear you say so."

"Yeah," Morgan sounded, looking distractedly at the colourful fish tank against one wall of the office. He was so happy, but therapy had a way of making him think about all the things he'd been avoiding in the bliss of a new healthy relationship.

"Can you prescribe me viagra?" he asked, before he could bury the question in his brain again.

"I can," Velasco said, masking any surprise at the question well. Morgan considered that perhaps he wasn't surprised.

"Will you?" Derek prompted when he didn't go on.

"You've been having trouble maintaining an erection?"

"I haven't got properly hard since before James raped me," Morgan said levelly. He was beginning to be able to speak about it with seeming ease, but inside every time he said words like _rape_ everything writhed and hurt. "There's been stirring, I mean, if you've got a dick, you get quarter masts on the regular, but nothing develops."

"Have you tried to masturbate since?"

"No, I don't want to do that, but at some point, me and Spencer are gonna have sex and I need to be able to perform."

"And you don't think you'll be capable of maintaining an erection with Spencer?"

"I'm broken," he said pointedly. They'd established that he was time and again, and therapy had become about trying to fix him.

"Have you and Spencer talked about sex?"

"No."

"So you haven't talked to him about impotence or wanting to use viagra?" Velaso asked in his practised, measured tone, devoid of judgement.

"No."

"And do you think he wants to have sex with you?"

"It's inevitable, and I don't want him to think I don't enjoy it."

"What if you _don't_ enjoy it, Derek?" Velasco asked.

He blinked a few times. "What?"

"What do you think will happen if you use viagra, interact sexually with Spencer and don't enjoy it? How will that make you feel, do you think?"

"It'll just confirm that I'm broken," Morgan shrugged.

"And then? Would you want to keep doing it when you don't enjoy it?"

Morgan caught himself considering it, considering the possibility of doing something he didn't enjoy to please someone else. He knew that mindset was a product of abuse, and shook his head to clear it. "No".

"So you'd tell him you used viagra, or that you didn't enjoy it? How do you think he'd react?"

"He'd know I'm broken too," he said in a small voice.

"Do you think he'd want to interact sexually with you again after that?"

"What am I meant to do, then?!" Morgan snapped. "If I can't do this, we're fucked! We won't work if I can't do this."

"So sex is compulsory to this relationship?"

"I told you, I'm not asexual, so, yeah!"

"Alright, you don't identify as asexual, you've made that very clear, but do you want to have sex with Spencer?"

"No!" Morgan admitted, feeling sick. "I want to want it, but I don't! I'm not asexual, I'm _broken_ , they're not the same thing!"

"Have you asked how Spencer would feel about having a non-sexual relationship?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Be-" he took a long breath in through his nose, glaring at Velasco. "Because he might say no."

They looked at each other for what felt like a long time, Morgan glaring and trying to hold back tears he felt pricking his eyes, Velasco's look was level and measured, thoughtful.

"I will not prescribe you something so you can force your body to do something you don't want to do," he said eventually. "You don't want to have sex, and you may never want to again, or you may find desire to engage in sexual activity returning. If that happens, and you still struggle physically, we could return to the topic."

"So I should tell him we can't have sex," Morgan murmured, eyes falling away from the therapist, thinking.

"Do you think he'd prefer for you to tell him you _can't_ , or if you started a discussion about sexual boundaries and where you stand now?"

"I guess."

"It is normal, Derek," Velasco reassured, "to lose sexual desire after being a victim of sexual violence. Given his expertise and his profession, do you think it's a fair assumption for me to make that Spencer will be understanding of your lack of desire?"

"I've gotta talk to him about this, haven't I?"

"Do you believe communication should be a constant in a romantic relationship?"

"But I've never really done that," he admitted. "Not really communicated about sex. I've been with women, a few, trying to convince myself I was straight." he paused, glancing at Velasco as he realised he was about to start discussing his sex life, and he wasn't sure if it was appropriate or not. He went on anyway. "And I always made sure they wanted it, that I did things that they like and made sure they came. So I checked in, asking if they were okay, but it wasn't a _discussion_. Not like the kind I'm gonna have to start to talk about this stuff. I don't know where to start."

"Do you think Spencer is going to listen, no matter where you start?"

"You always answer everything with a question," Morgan shrugged a laugh, leaning back in his seat. "To get me to be self-reflective, right? So I can process and you don't lead me by hand to all the answers."

"Do you think it works?" Velasco said, smiling slightly.

"Guess I'll have to find out."

*

Collectively, Morgan was pretty sure he'd spent more time kissing Reid now than everyone else he'd ever kissed combined. It wasn't as if he was keeping count, but every spare, appropriate moment seemed to involve kissing. When he wasn't forcing himself to focus on a case, he was thinking about spending time with Reid, consumed with the many and varied ways they'd already found themselves kissing. The bed and the couch were the main locations, but even with just those places there were numerous variables, and so many things to discover.

Reid had been the one to deepen them, to snake out his tongue as he cradled Moran’s skull in his palm, and it had opened the way to a wealth of new kinds of kisses. He'd discovered how Reid liked to finish kisses by rubbing noses together affectionately, that he always made a happy, pleasant noise in his throat when he did. He'd discovered that Reid’s tongue in his mouth turned him to jelly, and that when they'd been kissing deeply for some time and were lost to it, Reid had a habit of breaking away to bite gently at Morgan's bottom lip, to tug teasingly on it as they caught their breath a little, then to lick away the little hurt as they resumed. Falling asleep beside the man after kisses in the dark was a magical feeling that still lingered in the morning, with the knowledge that the kissing could resume again. Reid, he had decided, was very good at kissing.

So good that more and more, stopping the kissing felt like stopping progression towards something. Reid had never pushed, his hands hadn't even roamed under his shirt, but each time Morgan still felt like he was pulling away before things could go further, without establishing that stopping point.

"Spencer," Morgan breathed, pulling away from a particularly deep kiss, wrapped around each other on his bed in a new bedroom full of unpacked boxes, "can we talk?"

"Sure," Reid said, as curiosity clouded the smouldering desire in his eyes, though the leg hoisted over Morgan's didn't budge.

"My therapist said I should talk to you about this," he admitted.

"Okay."

"I'm-" he took a long breath in, and repositioned his hand against Reid's hip, not wanting to lose the closeness of their embrace. "I'm not ready to do more than make out with you."

"Oh," Reid said, smiling softly as he brushed a thumb over Morgan's jaw. "Okay, Derek."

"I want to be ready, but he said I should be honest. I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry," Reid murmured. "I'm in no rush. Actually, I should have said something sooner, but I didn't want to make it seem like I wanted to push the idea of being sexual by bringing it up. But I'm not really ready either."

"You're not?" Morgan asked, gazing heavy-lidded at Reid across the pillow.

"Your therapist is right, we should be honest. So, honestly, I'm scared after everything you've been through that we'll get to that point and it won't be good for you. I don't wanna rush."

"I want to get to that point," Morgan insisted, "I want to want you like that and I want to be with you, but I might never be ready. And that's not fair to you, so maybe we should stop now."

"Derek, if you never want to do anything sexual with me, then we'll never do anything sexual," Reid assured, keeping eye contact as he ran a hand over his head. "We love each other, and we'll make it work."

"How could you live knowing I might never be able to give you what you want, though?"

"It doesn't work like that," Reid said, as the hand came to rest at Morgan's neck. "In theory, I want to have sex with you, but in practice I will _never want_ to have sex with you if you don't want to, too." He frowned, hand coming away from Morgan's neck momentarily to gesture. "I mean, if you never want to do anything but make out, that's okay, because there is nothing less appealing to me than being sexual when you don't want it. If you're never at that point, neither am I," he finished matter-of-factly.

"But you'll have urges," Morgan muttered, looking away, ashamed that all his urges had seemed to be stripped out of him.

"I have hands," Reid said, the corner of his mouth twitching. "I love you, and I only ever want to do things that you _want_."

Morgan smiled softly at the sentiment, but he wasn't entirely sure he believed it. Reid was a good man, but he couldn't help the doubt forming. He trusted Reid though, so he knew he had to try and believe him even when everything he'd been through had worked against him being able to maintain that kind of belief.

"Hey," Reid murmured, turning the man's face towards him with his thumb. "I'm glad you said something. I want us to talk about everything."

There was such softness and care in Reid face that it was easy to say what he wanted, that the lingering fears could easily be swept aside. He didn't fear that Reid would chide him for his honesty, or that he would ransom his affection in order to make Morgan talk; affection without a price was a concept Morgan was only just starting to get used to.

"Me too," he agreed. "So if we're gonna talk, there's something else I wanna say," he went on, working up his courage.

"Yeah?"

"What do you think about, maybe, moving in with me?"

Reid's eyebrows twitched upwards, but he didn't look shocked in a negative way. "Do you mean in theory, or are you asking?"

"If you think it's a good idea, then I'm asking," he said, "but if you don't, just in theory."

Reid smiled, eyes narrowing in thought.

"We are early in our romantic relationship," he said. "We've been together six weeks. But our relationship hasn't developed by common standards, and we've known each other a long time. I've only spent three nights out of a possible thirty four we've been able to stay at our own homes in mine. I like being here with you, and I fully intend for this relationship to be the only romantic one in my life until I die."

Morgan's heart jumped at the words, and he found himself smiling as he continued to listen to Reid think aloud.

"So eventually, co-habiting would be a logical step. But I'm wary of cultural warnings about rushing into co-habiting, and I have a lease on an apartment with four months left, meaning I'd incur a fee if I broke it. Also, we're not out to the team yet, so us moving in together is likely to set off flags for them, and although our department doesn't have regulations against peers dating, we should probably still let the team know. A part of me wants to say yes, but I think I should think about it for a while."

"Fair enough," Morgan said. Reid telling him he intended for them to be together for the rest of their lives put it into perspective really, that they didn't have to rush and all things would come in time. "We should tell them, though," he added. "I'd like us to do that."

"Yeah?"

"I don't want to hide who I am anymore, and now we're together, you're part of who I am."

"Okay," Reid smiled, and pulled Morgan gently too him by the neck to kiss him. "We'll go public whenever you're ready."

"I'm ready," Morgan said, believing it as he kissed Reid back.

**“To gaze into another persons face is to do two things: to recognise their humanity and to assert your own.” ― Lawrence Hill  
**


	9. Sparks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three times there's sparks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a section of this in which characters discuss race/experience with racism. It felt like a natural progression of writing this chapter, but full disclosure that I am a white woman and not a black or latino man so I am not writing from my own lived experience.

Morgan had thought of this as a date idea for him and Reid years ago, in the nights when he'd let himself entertain the ideas of ifs and whens. It needed a little tweaking now, but he'd excitedly put it together, and now he just had to hope they wouldn't get called into work.

"You told me to wear something warm I wouldn't mind getting dirty, and a change of clothes," Reid said as he set his bag down on the sofa and bent down to give Clooney a fuss. "I'm slightly worried, but I'm wearing two sweaters."

"Don't fear," Morgan chuckled, extending his hand. "Come with me." He led him to the garage, the dog following in their wake. "Sorry boy," he told him, as he kept him from entering with them. "You stay in the nice warm house, go watch TV."

When he'd shut the door and turned to Reid, the man was smiling coyly. "You leave the TV on for him when you go out, too?"

"Sometimes," he shrugged. "If I'm feeling guilty. He needs enrichment. He likes the nature channel."

"What are we getting up to?" Reid asked, looking over an assortment of tubs and packets surrounding a worktable and two chairs, two pairs of safety goggles on the surface.

"You were a smart kid," Morgan mused, "you ever make things explode?"

"A few times," he said. "Are we making explosives?"

"Just some small ones," he grinned.

"Have you done this before?" Reid asked, but he was already taking up a seat and looking over the components.

"Uh-huh. Also, bomb squad, remember?"

"Yes," he nodded.

"Fire extinguisher is there," Morgan pointed it out, "just in case."

"There were over nine thousand firework-related injuries in the USA last year," Reid supplied.

"We'll be careful," Morgan said, sitting down opposite him. "If I'm honest, I already did the most dangerous bit, which was making the stars."

"Stars?"

"Yeah," Morgan said, picking up an empty casing. "The type we're gonna make, aerial fireworks, have two main explosive components: the lifting charge, which is part of what we're gonna do," he explained, indicating one end of the shell, "and the explosive that gives the effect, the sparks, the colour. I went ahead and made those because they take a couple of days to dry. I made a few different ones."

"Okay," Reid said as he put on his goggle, looking eager. "Show me how you do it?"

Reid was a fast learner. He already knew the basic chemistry, even if he hadn't constructed fireworks before. Morgan might not be as bookish as Reid was, but it was nice to do something where their knowledge was a good match, and Morgan's upper hand at practical experience meant he got to pass on knowledge and skill. Reid had never been ashamed to not know something, only eager to learn.

"So which one's red?" He asked a while later, looking over the collection of small grey cubes.

"These," Morgan said, pushing a small tray across. "They crackle, too, should be yellowish sparks."

"So, lithium?" Reid said, picking one up for inspection with a gloved hand.

"Lithium, strontium, and sodium compounds for the sparks."

"Where'd you learn all this?" Reid asked.

"High school chemistry," Morgan laughed.

"I mean the practical application. I doubt your high school chemistry teacher taught you to make fireworks."

"Nah, it was in bomb squad. We learned to make them for practical explosive demonstrations," Morgan explained. "You know, being able to identify bomb components by sight, smell, even the nature of explosion. 'Cause we didn't just deal with bomb disarming. We got called in to explosion sites to investigate. We were always busy on the fourth of July, you gotta be able to tell fireworks from bombs."

"I could make a bomb," Reid mused.

"I bet," Morgan chuckled. "Let's stick to fireworks, okay? Like I showed you..."

A few hours later, they were stood out in the garden in their coats, and gloves, the dog fed and shut in the house with the television to distract him.

"He doesn't mind the bangs when he's inside," Morgan said as he carried the box of their homemade fireworks to the middle of the garden, Reid falling into step beside him. He set the box down, and pointed further down into the dark. "I've got buckets of sand down there we can stick them in. And a torch somewhere, wanna see what we're doing-" Reid handed over the flashlight, grinning at him in the dim light from the kitchen window.

"There we go. You wanna go first or shall I?"

"You go," Reid said, waving his hand at him.

"Okay, but I'm gonna light one of yours," he pointed the flashlight at the box, and picked out one of the rockets Reid had constructed. Further down the garden were three buckets full of sand, and he stabbed the stick of Reid's rocket into it, twisting it until it was steady in place. He held the flashlight with one hand as he lit the long fuse with a lighter in the other, then turned on his heel and jogged the distance back to Reid.

"I always go for longer fuses so I don't get my ass singed. Or I'm all about the anticipation, whatever sounds better."

Reid's laugh was interrupted by the squeal of the rocket launching into the air with a tail of white sparks, exploding with a bang high above them in a cloud of red sparks. Silver burst through the colour next, twinkling and falling slowly downwards, fading into the blackness of the sky.

"Wow!" Reid said. "That was the aluminium?"

"Yeah," Morgan grinned. "That was a good one. Your turn."

Reid took the flashlight and picked out a firework from the box, heading towards the launch site further along the garden as Morgan watched. Less than a minute later he'd strode back, in time for another firework to launch and explode with a pop and a dozen green balls thrust out from the centre.

"That was quieter than I thought," Reid observed. "Impressive, though."

"Those are better in a volley of several. Really nice-looking display."

They continued in the same fashion, taking turns to choose a firework they'd create and light it, then moved back to watch and comment; they talked about the composition, sharing their knowledge of the compounds, and commenting on the way they exploded. Bright white sparks that crackled in the sky, to another cloud of red with silver sparkles, and one that exploded with the green and red tails jittering randomly away from the centre. Fantastic showers of golden sparks high in the sky, and glorious red that fell down so far it looked like a magical rain.

"That was amazing," Reid said after they'd set off the last one, a huge explosion of random colour and shape made from the last of all the explosive components. "This was the idea you'd had planned for so long?"

"Yeah," Morgan said, slipping his hand around Reid's waist. "I thought you might like it."

"I did, I loved it. I love _you_."

"I love you, too."

"I want to move in," Reid said, turning on the spot so they were facing each other, hands on Morgan's coat torso.

"You do?" Morgan asked, the words catching a little in his throat.

"If the offer still stands. I want to be here with you all the time."

"Of course it does. I want you here."

"Good," Reid said, pulling Morgan close to kiss him. "Think I'll stay forever."

\---

The team had made it to Morgan's house for a big Mexican takeout after a long week at work. There were still boxes spread around, work having got in the way of unpacking, but they made do. As Reid helped himself to another enchilada, one ear on the conversation Garcia and Rossi were having about the merits of Twitter, he thought about this gathering as the marking of an occasion; Morgan was starting fresh, after so long in a place that had become poisoned by what had happened to him there. He'd invited the team back into his life again, after so long of having to shut them out. This was healing; Morgan was at ease and laughing on the couch with Hotch, and starting to truly look like the man he'd been before the abuse.

"Spence," JJ said, burrito in hand paused halfway to her mouth from the armchair she was sat in. "Is this your chair?"

"Huh?" he sounded distractedly, dragging his eyes away from the couch.

"This is your chair, isn't it? From your apartment."

"Oh," a few more sets of eyes had looked over now, disrupting the murmurs of conversation. "Yeah. I live here now."

"Since when?" Prentiss asked, coming in from the kitchen with a fresh bottle of wine.

"I moved in last week. A good number of these boxes are mine."

"We're together," Morgan piped up. "We were going to say something tonight, but looks like JJ's master detective skills beat us to it."

There was laugher, and Reid met Morgan's gaze. One smiled, and the other returned it. Morgan turned back to Hotch, who Reid was thankful to see smiled warmly. Co-workers dating wasn't against FBI regulations when there wasn't a superior-subordinate dynamic in place, so they didn't have to worry about that, but Hotch's approval was still important.

When he looked around to find Prentiss, she was missing. He wandered through into the kitchen and found her leaning against a counter, dimly lit by only the light over the stove that had been left on. He set his plate down on the kitchen island as he made his way around to her.

"Emily?"

She didn't answer right away, glass of wine in one hand, the other half covering her eyes as she sobbed gently.

"Sorry," she sniffed, wiping at her shining eyes and meeting his. "I'm okay. It's the wine."

"Did we upset you?" he asked softly, but confused. Of all the team he expected Prentiss to be the most supportive, maybe tied with Garcia in enthusiasm.

"No, Reid, the opposite. You idiots finally got it together," she smiled as fresh tears rolled over her cheeks. "I thought you'd be clueless forever. And then with what Morgan went through, I thought that was it. You've both keep living in this weird bubble of thinking your feeling were unrequited, while we looked on without being able to do anything."

"You knew how we felt about each other?"

"I'd been with the team a week before I was utterly convinced," she gave a little laugh. "We didn't want to gossip about it, but more than once we've joked with Garcia about setting you guys up, you know, like some wacky sitcom situation to get you two to realise you're being useless." She sniffed, and then dissolved into fresh sobs, covering her face with her hand.

"I'm sorry, wine makes me cry, and I am so, so _relieved_ for you. For you both."

"Thanks," he said, touched, if a little embarrassed for her. She'd probably swear him to secrecy over this when she was sober. She reached for his shoulder, squeezing a little hard.

"I'm so happy for you," she insisted. "You deserve this, you deserve to be okay. Morgan deserves someone who is never going to hurt him, and I know you won't. And he won''t hurt you. This is love, right? Not just dating?"

"Yeah," he reassured. "We love each other. We're doing things conventional to a 'dating' relationship status, because it's so recent. But we know what we want, and we're serious about being together. I don't want to waste any more time."

"Good. Don't. You two get on and love each other," she insisted, pushing him away, shooing him. "Go on. I'll be in when I've got a hold of myself."

The bottom floor of the house was very open plan, spaces separated by large arches rather than doors, so he could see the gathered guests in the lounge as she stepped back into the dining room. He picked up a fresh plate to get more food, not wanting to backtrack into the kitchen to retrieve the one he'd set down and disturb Prentiss as she composed herself.

"We ordered too much, even for seven of us," Morgan mused, sidling up beside him and beginning to spoon rice onto his plate. "Guess we're having cold takeout for lunch tomorrow."

"There's the fundamental difference between you and me," Reid said as he chase the last meatball around a tray with his fork, "you try and order just enough to feed people, I always order more than needed for the expressed purpose of having cold leftovers the next day."

"You like a cold burrito?" Morgan asked, wrinkling his nose exaggeratedly. "It's been a long time since you've been a student, baby boy."

"Trust me, okay? I'll bring you around to my way of thinking."

"I don't mind trying new things," Morgan said, leaning in to kiss the side of Reid's face.

"You glad we told them?"

"Yeah. It's nice to be 'out'. Speaking of which, can we talk about something? There's something-"

Morgan was interrupted as Garcia announced they were about to break out a game of Trivial Pursuit, a bottle of wine in her hand.

"What is it?" Reid asked, curious as to what Morgan wanted to talk about.

"It can wait, I think we're being summoned," he chuckled. "I'm never going to lose another game, with you on my team."

"Who says we're automatically on the same team?" Reid teased as they went to join the others, Prentiss now present and smiling without tears this time.

\---

Reid had not done a lot of making out in his teenage years, but he had consumed a lot of pop culture, so he knew that the frequent makeout sessions he and Morgan kept having on the couch could be compared to certain tropes. He enjoyed them immensely, especially as they got more familiar with each other's techniques, and effortlessly constructed new joint ones the more time they spent together.

They were sprawled across the couch, Reid on top of Morgan, four hands roaming as they kissed deeply. Reid had worried at first about crowding Morgan's personal space, or putting his weight on him and causing him to panic, but they communicated what they liked, and each of their confidence had grown.

He could feel Morgan's erection against him, he was hard too, and it felt so good when they rubbed against each other, devouring each other in a kiss. But in the back of his mind he knew he had to stop and check in, knew if he didn't things could go badly wrong. Morgan had already told him he didn't want to have sex, that he wanted to want to but wasn't ready, and Reid understood. The last thing he wanted was to do anything Morgan wasn't completely okay with. Gently, and a little reluctantly, he stopped pushing against Morgan, and dragged his lips away.

"Do you want this?" he asked. "This is further than we've gone before." Morgan, who was breathless under him, nodded.

"Yeah. Do you?"

"Uh huh," Reid sounded. "You want to keep going?"

"Yeah," Morgan said, and he leaned up to kiss him. As worried as Reid was that Morgan might not want this, he had to trust when the man said he did. He had to trust that Morgan would tell him if he didn't want to do something.

Morgan's hand slipped up his thigh and onto his backside, using the leverage to bring their groins together harder, Reid pressing down and Morgan upwards, angling themselves both into each other for stimulation. He groaned, pressing his forehead against Morgan's, who pulled his pelvis down closer and push his own up to meet it.

Part of him wanted to slow down so they could peel off their clothes and touch each other's skin, but he couldn't jeopardise this. Morgan was still sleeping in long sleeves and hiding his body most of the time, which Reid thought was residual trauma from so long hiding the evidence of his abuse. The time would potentially come for that, and Reid could wait. This was exciting for what it was, too; the rush of desire that left them frotting against each other needily, too wrapped up to take a moment and undress. He was close already, knew he could last out if he tried, but his body ached to be pushed past the tipping point.

With the hand that wasn't gripping Reid's backside, Morgan snaked it up inside Reid's bracing arm to slip around his neck, pulling him into line for a kiss. The ever-present gentleness of Morgan meant the kiss was soft even in its need, the hand on his neck bracing and reassuring.

"I'm not gonna last," he murmured. "But don't stop, I'm sorry."

"Don't apologise," Reid said as he ground his hips downward, sliding his clothed erection against Morgan's. "I'm close too."

He kissed along Morgan's jaw, and the man moved to catch their mouths together. He wanted to see Morgan's face when he came, but if Morgan wanted to kiss as they rutted closed and closer to climax, that could happen another day.

"Spencer," he groaned, pulling him close by the neck, foreheads pressed together again. "Oh god, pretty boy, I'm gonna-"

"Derek-" he keened as his lover spasmed against him, gripping him tighter and moaning as if the orgasm was a complete surprise to him. He imagined countless times how Morgan would sound in that moment, and now they were here, together, and Morgan was muttering his name as he body shook with sensation, and it was too much for Reid. He ground down hard, pushing himself beyond the point of no return, his cum hot and sticky in the confines of his underwear, body pressed flush to Morgan's. He groaned, forehead slipping away from the others and instead pressing into the crook of Morgan's neck, gasping as his hips jutted wildly.

He kissed Morgan's neck in the aftermath, making his slow way up along to his jaw and eventually his mouth. The man's eyes were lidded he breathing deep, and he was smiling.

"Was that okay?" Reid asked gently.

"Yeah," he smile spread into a grin. "More than okay."

Reid smiled too, and let Morgan pull him close, resting his head beside the other's as their bodies thrummed with residual sensation. They'd have to move soon and clean themselves up, but they were unwilling to part so soon, savouring the intimacy.

\---

Morgan had become quite accustomed to his therapist's office, and the service he offered. Things were going well, he was down to one session a week. He felt it was enough, but that he still benefited from it. It had been hard enough to admit he needed help and then to accept it, now he was determined not to give it up too soon just because he was feeling better.

The same was true of the antidepressants he was taking. He felt good and was at a better place in his life, and the medication was part of the reason. He was still having nightmares and problems with anxiety and panic, but they felt increasingly manageable. It was a long forgotten sensation to be so in control.

"We had sex," Morgan said, after they'd touched on a few other topics during the session.

"You did?"

"Yeah, Sunday night," Morgan nodded. "Well, we were making out and we ended up dry humping. But Spencer calls it sex; he refers to it as 'when we had sex on the couch'. And I like that I guess? I like that he considers any kind of sexual thing we do to be sex, that it doesn't have to be, y'know, penetrative to count? Which makes sense, doesn't it? Or else you're saying anyone who doesn't want to or can't isn't having real sex. Like lesbians. Well, lesbians who have vaginas, I mean. And dudes with vaginas of course.. you know what I mean, right?" He knew he was rambling, but he'd been doing a lot of thinking about sexuality, especially his own since that night on the couch, and it was all eager to be expressed in the first therapy session since it had been discovered.

"I understand," Velasco assured him. "How was it? I mean, were you happy with the circumstances? How did you feel afterwards?"

"It was good," Morgan assured. He was used to Velasco asking him quite personal questions, comfortable now that the therapist didn't expect him to divulge anything too intimate, but to discuss his feelings surrounding personal issues. "It didn't cost me anything."

"What do you mean?"

"Spencer didn't hold me feeling good to ransom. He checked in, made sure I was okay, and I knew that me, and me feeling good was the most important thing. I know that shouldn't be notable, but it is to me. We were lying there on the couch, we'd just came in our pants like horny teenagers, and I didn't feel ashamed. He didn't make me feel ashamed, like James would have."

"I'm very glad to hear that."

"I think I’m getting better," Morgan nodded.

"I think you're doing really well," Velasco said carefully, "but I don't think you should measure your recovery by the milestones you make in your sex life."

"Why not?"

"Because I have seen focus on what you can and can't do sexually as a measure for recovery hurt people. I don't believe that achieving a 'normal' sex life should be a goal for most people's recovery."

"But I want that, I want a normal sex life. It makes sense that that's a goal for rape recovery."

"I think that's what a lot of victims think, and are told. But that means that those victims who can't achieve a 'normal' sex life feel like they are failing to recover, regardless of the other steps they've made."

"Yeah," Morgan nodded. "Okay. I get that. If things hadn't suddenly seemed to click into place, I'd still be one of those people, I get it. But it's important to me."

"I do understand that," Velasco said patiently. "And I'm not saying you shouldn't consider progress in sexual intimacy with Spencer to be a sign of you recovering. All I mean is that if or when it doesn't go well – if you can't perform, or you have anxiety, are triggered into flashbacks to the sexual violence you've faced, or otherwise feel you're having 'problems' sexually, that you don't consider that 'failing'. You have come such a long way, Derek. Slow progress, or no progress in one facet of your life doesn't mean you're not recovering. But I do appreciate that really the only one who can define success for you, is you. If sex is part of that, then I will try to give you the support you need to achieve those goals in a healthy way."

"I don't really have any goals right now," Morgan said. "I thought I'd lost my sex drive, but it looks like it's still there. I don't want to rush, I just want to see how things go. Spencer is better than I could have imagined. We've talked about this stuff, and he basically said he'd want to be with me even if the only thing we ever do is kiss."

"If Reid were the one who didn't want to have sex, would you still want to be with him?"

"Yeah, of course. I know I shouldn't be shocked that the way he feels doesn't rely on whether we have sex, but I still am. I still feel like I don't- don't deserve this happiness."

"You do."

"Yeah, I keep reminding myself that," Morgan gave a little shrug of a laugh. "Sort of along the same lines," he started, shifting in his seat, "I've been thinking a lot about what else I deserve, and I've been thinking about pressing charges against James."

"You have?"

"The cops still haven't picked him up yet on the breaking and entering charge, but he's dangerous. I don't want him out there. But things have just got back to normal at work, and with Spencer, and I don't want to mess it all up. But having it hanging over me is almost as bad."

"It's a big decision."

"There's so much physical evidence, it's not getting a conviction that worries me," Morgan admitted. "It's having to recount the worst night of my life again, and again."

"That's to be expected," he nodded. "You've talked about that night in varying detail with me, do you think that's helped at all?"

"It'll be different to you," Morgan sighed. "You listen, and you're not trying to find out if I’m lying. You give me the benefit of believing I’ve come to therapy to tell the truth, not spin a story." He rested his arms on his knees, looking at his therapist levelly. "I was a cop; I never worked sex crimes, but I was involved in a few cases, and I was in that culture. I know how shitty cops are to rape victims. The system as a whole, and the individuals in it. The reality is, that if that last time hadn't been so brutal, he could easily walk. I know there's enough to convict, but it doesn't mean the cops are going to give a shit. It's so much macho culture, so much homophobic bullshit."

Velasco didn't say anything, but his expression was open and interested, and Morgan fully believed it was genuine.

"And that doesn't even start on what it'll be like if I deal with a mostly white force. Cops love their 'black on black crime'. Even if they're sympathetic, I get to play the poor Good Black with the nice new white boyfriend, and James is the savage, as if the fact he's a scumbag is down to his blackness and not that the vast majority of partner violence and rape is intra-racial. I don't wanna go around feeling like I have to defend my fucking rapist because white people are ignorant."

"It's difficult when the only systems we can get justice in are flawed," Velasco nodded, looking sympathetic.

"Did you ever get justice?" Morgan asked, even though he knew it wasn't his place. "You don't have to answer that."

"Not through the legal system," Velasco said levelly. "But I've followed many cases that have been pursued. I've testified in a few."

"As what?"

"An expert witness on male-on-male sexual violence."

"As prosecution?" Morgan asked warily.

"Yes. There are lots of false assumptions that rape victims face, and some that are specific to male victims."

"Did it help? You testifying?"

"Overall, I'd say it did."

"Do you think I should find an expert witness like that, if I have to go to court?" Morgan asked, worrying his bottom lip with his teeth. "I know it can't be you."

"It depends. If you only report the last incident, the physical evidence and testimony should be substantial enough. But if you were to try to bring up charges for the earlier assaults and rapes, that's when expert witnesses become valuable. Because when people stay in sexually violent relationships, it's easy to cast doubt on the legitimacy of their claims. It's not fair, but most people run on the notion of 'if it was that bad, why did they stay'?"

"But if it goes to trial, I could talk about those things, even if I'm not trying to get charges for all the incidents, right?" He knew the law, but talking about his own circumstance was making him unsure.

"Your lawyer would ask you about your relationship with James. This of course, is if it goes to trial, and he doesn't just plead guilty."

"He wouldn't. He's so confident, he'd think he can get out of it even with all that evidence."

"He'll have a lawyer seriously suggesting him to plead out," Velasco pointed out. "Not even the most outrageous claims he tries can explain the extent of the attack and the injuries you sustained. He almost killed you."

"I'm so scared if I press charges he'll get away with it," he admitted. "I don't know what I'd do if did. Or I do, I know what I’d be at risk of doing, and I don't wanna be in that place again. I don't want a gun under my chin thinking it's the best choice I’ve got."

"Do you think if by some very unlikely chance, a trial did go badly, you'd be in that bad a place again?"

"I don't know. I don't wanna find out. But I want justice, and I know I have to risk that to get it."

\---

"You know how I wanted to talk about something last week, when the team was here?" Morgan asked, standing in the doorway to their bedroom. Reid was perched on the end of the bed, brushing his lengthening hair. It was getting so long he'd started tying it in a loose ponytail to sleep some nights.

"Yeah?"

"I think I made a mistake," Morgan said, leaning on the door frame.

"A mistake?"

"Coming out as gay."

"What do you-" The shock was clear on Reid's face, mouth forming words that didn't come, eyes falling away from his, and it was heartbreaking.

"No, no, not like that," Morgan assured quickly. "This is not a mistake, we're not a mistake." He quickly crossed over to sit next to Reid on the bed.

"I've been thinking a lot about when I used to sleep with women. I was interested in women, I liked women. I don't think I was using them to stop myself thinking about liking guys, not most of the time. I have been genuinely attracted to women, right?" he knew he was rambling, but he had to get it out. "Then there was James, and I got wrapped up in discovering that part of me that liked guys. Hell, maybe even preferring guys. Preferring you, really. But that doesn't make all those feelings and interactions with women mean less. I think maybe I'm bisexual?"

Reid let out a long breath he seemed to have been holding, shoulders relaxing.

"I was worried what you were gonna say for a bit there," he admitted, taking Morgan's hand and bringing it up to his lips to kiss his knuckles. "I think defining yourself how you're comfortable doing so is important."

"Does it even matter, if we're together?"

"Of course it does," Reid assure him. "Being in love with you doesn't make me, or either of us, less bisexual. Personally, I prefer the term pansexual for myself, it was a better fit for me when I was exploring my identity. But the point is, I'm not going to love you any less for you exploring how you define your attraction."

"I've got to come out again to my mom," he groaned.

"There's no rush," Reid assured. "And I’m sure she'll understand. And you didn't come out specifically to the team, did you? We came out as being together, we didn't detail the labels we use."

"Guess not," he breathed a sigh of relief. "Okay, that was easier than I thought."

"This shouldn't be hard," Reid assured him, reaching out a hand to cup his cheek and pull him in and kiss the opposite one. "I love you, no matter what."

"Love you too," he said softly.

"You ready to turn in?" he asked as he pulled his hair back and tied it up.

"Yeah," Morgan nodded, and they both stood up. "But can I sleep in my boxers? Is that okay?"

He'd felt weird sleeping in sweatpants and long sleeves for so long; at first he had needed it to feel safe, then he'd been ashamed to let Reid see his body, and now that was exactly what he wanted; for Reid to see him.

"Sure," Reid said gently.

"I want you to see me," he admitted.

"Okay," Reid said.

He worried the hem of his shirt, then took a breath and lifted it over his head, pulling it off. He watched Reid’s eyes rake over his chest, taking in his body; the last time he'd seen it, it would have been marred by ugly bruising.

"Do you want to see me, too?" he asked. Morgan nodded, and watched as Reid pulled off his too-large t-shirt, revealing the bare expanse of his thin chest.

At the same time they wriggled out of their sweatpants, leaving them as puddles on the bedroom floor to be cleaned up in the morning, standing in the lamp-lit bedroom in their respective underwear; Morgan in fitted black briefs, Reid in some kind of comic-print y-fronts and mismatched socks.

"Whose that, then?" Morgan couldn't help asking of his underwear, daring to reach out and brush Reid's bare waist.

"It's Doctor Who!" he said, a little exasperatedly. "Garcia bought me these, you made a big fuss when I opened them in the office!"

"Oh yeah," he chuckled. Reid smiled indulgently, and jerked his head towards the bed. "Ready?"

They climbed into bed and Morgan laid on his back, Reid turned off the lamp and then curled around his side, arm across his chest, snuggling the covers around them.

"I used to sleep naked most of the time," Morgan admitted.

"Me too," Reid agreed, "except the socks." He ran one of his sock-covered feet over Morgan's. "It's winter, I can't sleep with cold feet, and I don't radiate as much body heat as you do."

"That's for sure, your hands are cold," he said.

"Sorry."

"It's okay," Morgan murmured, lifting his own and putting it over Reid’s on his chest. "I'll keep you warm."

Reid hummed happily. "This okay? This pace of things?"

"Yeah, Spencer," Morgan said, stroking his hand along Reid's back. "Wanted to get naked with you. Nearly naked. You know what I mean, I wanted to be like this with you."

Morgan hadn't slept as well as he had been doing with Reid in the same bed for a long time. He didn't feel bad for needing the other man's presence, for relying on it, because as far as he was concerned he wanted to share a bed with him for the rest of his life. As he drifted off he thought about it, ten years from now, wrapped around Reid and listening to his breathing change as he fell into sleep, knowing his mind was slowing down its constant whirring, that he offered just as relaxing an environment to Reid as the man did to him. He wanted that forever.

Morgan was woken by a harsh sound what would turn out to be several hours later, bleary-eyed and confused. Reid was still snuggling against him, but roused too by the noise, and there was a heaviness on his legs. It took him a few seconds to realise it was Clooney, who had come in at some point and decided to sleep with them. The dog had raised his head at the sound too, and through the dark Morgan wondered if he was as confused as them.

It was his phone, but it wasn't the ringtone he'd assigned to the BAU, so they weren't being called in. He disentangled himself from Reid, who made an annoyed sound, and scrabbled around on the bedside table for his phone, jabbing groggily at the button to answer.

"Hello?"

"Is this Derek Morgan?"

"Yeah," he said shortly, rubbing his face. If this wasn't important, he was going to flip out.

"This is officer Olivia Collins of the Maryland State Police," the voice said, "do you own a property on Maple Street, Silver Spring, Montgomery?"

"Yeah," he said, trying to sit up, dislodging Clooney who simply moved over and planted himself on Reid. "I recently moved out, I'm renting it out."

"There's been a fire at your property."

Morgan felt his heart rate jump. He'd rented the old house out to a young couple, two women with a five year old son and three cats. He was intending to sell it to another landlord, but he'd been taking his time making sure he was selling it to someone who would honour the rental agreement he'd set out with the new occupants. "A fire? Are the Turners alright? The family that live there?"

Reid had sat up, and turned on the lamp, making them both squint against the sudden flood of light.

"They're fine, they weren't home at the time of the fire."

"How bad is it?"

"The fire damage is extensive."

"They had cats," he said. Seeing a happy family move into the house where something awful had happened had been a huge positive step, and now he could feel his anxiety rising. "Are they okay?"

"Oh," the officer said, making a thoughtful sound. "I think I saw someone with a cat carrier. Give me a minute and I can try and find out for you?"

"Please."

He kept listening, could hear muffled voices he couldn't understand. He glanced at Reid, who was looking worried and stroking Clooney behind the ears.

"Hello?" the officer said a minute or so later.

"Hi."

"I think the cats were out at the time." Morgan nodded to himself, remembering now that when he'd shown them around the house they'd asked if it would be okay to install a cat door. "Two of them are accounted for, and a neighbour spotted the other heading off earlier."

"Do you know what happened?"

"They're still putting out the fire, but arson is suspected. The family are new to the area, they don't really know anyone here, so there's little reason to suspect anyone was targeting them."

"Except that they're lesbians and sometimes that's enough to make people a target," he said, his throat tight.

"We are considering that possibility. Would you be able to come to the Silver Springs Police department to help us by answering some questions?"

"Now?"

"No, you can come in the morning."

"Yeah, okay."

"If you give your details to the front desk, they'll be able to help you. I might be there, depending what time you come in. I'm sorry that this has happened to you, Mr. Morgan."

"Thanks, officer. Bye."

He ended the call, dropping his hands heavily into his lap. There was a twisting, unpleasant feeling in his gut, and he could feel it becoming harder to breathe. Rationally, he knew he was about to go headlong into a panic attack, but there was nothing he could do to stop it as his brain whirred and the room seemed to close in on him. He couldn't breathe.

"Derek?" Reid said, sounding far away.

"It was arson," he said, voice shuddering. He tried to take long breaths, but they hurt his chest and he clutched at it, franticly pushing the covers away, desperate to get away from the suddenly confining space.

"Derek," Reid said again, louder but still far away as he gasped for breath and he knew, he _knew_.

"It was James. I know it was James."


End file.
